The Great Galveston Hurricane

The Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900 still stands as the most devastating natural disaster in the history of the United States, with casualties reaching at least six thousand. Many houses and buildings did not stand a chance against the high velocity winds that the storm put out, and the huge waves caused massive damage, nearly submerging the entire island. To prevent such devastation again, Galveston had two engineering marvels put in place, the seawall and the grade raising of the island. This paper will examine the raising of the seawall and the grade raising of the island of Galveston as a result of the great hurricane of 1900. These two feats of engineering will be proven in this paper to be the biggest challenges that Galveston faced to ensure that a disaster like the hurricane of 1900 did not happen to that level again, a challenge that the people of Galveston were more than willing to take on. More than a year after the disaster and the implementation of a commission form of government, a committee under the new government was put in place to bring in engineers to plan protection for the city against storms.1 The committee appointed a board of engineers that included General H. M. Robert, Alfred Noble, and H. C. Ripley, and they were instructed to develop the safest and most efficient ways of protecting the city, raising the city’s grade, and developing a seawall to prevent overflow in case of a storm.2 The engineers soon got a report to present to the public. In the report they pointed out original grading surveys showing that the highest point on the island was 8.9 feet and the average was 5.8 feet and going as low as 3.7 feet.3 The Board then proposed a 3 mile long solid concrete wall as tall as 17 feet, 1.3 feet taller than the highest point of flooding reached by the storm of 1900. The Board also proposed the raising of the city grade.4 The three engineers calculated the cost at $1,294,755 for the seawall and $2,210,285 for the grade raising; the