Galveston Seawall

The Galveston Seawall has protected Galveston from the threat of further destruction, allowing it to grow into a modern and prosperous city. The Seawall is significant in that it represents positive action by a community manifested in a massive engineering effort to withstand the forces of nature.

On September 8, 1900, Galveston was exposed to the havoc of a severe tropical hurricane. Of the 38,000 citizens residing in Galveston at that time, 6000 were killed and 3600 homes were destroyed.

After the 1900 storm, the City of Galveston decided to reorganize its government completely. A reorganization committee was created and consisted of three lawyers: Col. Walter Gresham, F. D. Minor, and R. Waverly Smith. After examining several charters and documents, they invented the city commission form of government. Commission- ers were placed directly in charge of specific departments (e.g. Finance and Revenue, Street and Public Property, Waterworks and Sewerage, and Police and Fire).

On November 22, 1901, the County Commissioners Court appointed a board of engineers to report on a means for protecting the city. The board was made up of General H. M. Robert, former Chief of Army Engineers, Alfred Noble, and H. C. Ripley. The board's purpose was to decide on the safest and most economical means of protecting the city, elevating and refilling lots and land from overflow during a storm, and designing a breakwater or seawall of sufficient strength and height to prevent overflow from the Gulf. In order to finance the construction of the seawall, Galveston obtained indirect funds from the State. All state taxes of the surrounding area went to Galveston to finance the construction.

Work on the seawall commenced in October 1902 and was finished by July of 1904. J. M. O'Rourke & Company were contractors, with George Boschke, chief engineer for the city of Galveston.

The original segment of the wall stretched 17,593 feet in length. The back side was vertical with a curved face to turn incoming water back into the Gulf. It was 17 feet high, 16 feet wide at the bottom, and 5 feet wide at the top. The wall had a riprap toe extending 27 feet out from the wall. In 1918 the seawall was extended 10,300 feet.

A grade-raising project was financed by the city with some assistance from the state of Texas. The contracted cost of moving the sand for the grade-raising was $2,080,745. This sum did not include the cost of the vast effort of individuals and city and county governments in related operations. More than 2000 private dwellings were raised to new levels. Larger buildings, which were more economical to raise than to tear down and rebuild, were lifted by the ordinary methods of house-raising. New foundations were then built under them before the sand-fill reached their sites. Smaller buildings were supported on posts, carefully braced to prevent the inward rush of water and sand from undermining them. Until proper connections could be made, owners of such raised houses and businesses received their supply of gas through connecting garden hoses. The level of the populated portion of the city was raised as much as 20 feet in place to provide a solid backing for the newly completed seawall and to prevent water from tropical storms from ever reaching dangerous levels in the city.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Galveston Grade-Raising was the necessary relocation of all public services in the city. Such services included water, gas, sewers, and street railway tracks. The streets in the populated districts have raised an average of 8 feet, which required a corresponding rise in the level of street railway tracks, poles, sidewalks, fences, and buildings of all kinds. Because of the depths to which all sewers and other underground pipes would have become buried in the grade-raising operations, it was deemed necessary to raise them also to correspond to the new grades. The altered levels for the sewer pipes proved to be a benefit to the citizens of Galveston because their changed level gave the entire system the grade necessary for proper drainage.

In order to raise fences and other structures too bulky to move, a braced post method similar to that used on the smaller houses was used. Gas, sewer, and water mains, after an initial period of trial and error experimentation, were raised by excavating down to the mains and lifting them progressively a little at a time by chain blocks on tripod derricks, and then filling the trenches under them so as to avoid breaking joints and interrupting service. Once raised to a level where they could no longer be supported on the soil, the mains were carried on temporary supports and when at their proper new grades they were braced by firm struts nailed to timbers driven into the ground on either side of the mains. When thus supported the mains were able to withstand the inward rush of sand and water that buried both mains and supports.

In 1915 Galveston was struck by another tropical storm. Had it not been for the seawall and grade-raising, Galveston would probably have been wiped out.

Today, evidence of grade-raising is not obvious to the unknowing observer. The seawall has been extended greatly, and is presently over 10 miles in length and protects virtually the entire Gulf side of Galveston Island.