Galveston is an island 32 miles long and about two miles wide. SIMON: Save for that storm, Galveston might have been the fourth largest city in the country today rather than Houston. You know, it's like it happened yesterday.
#1900 galveston hurricane track full#
The place was full 2,000 people came for that event. On the night of September 7th, 2000, there was a panel in Galveston on the 1900 storm at the old opera house. how much this is still an issue in Galveston. Galveston really hasn't grown in many years, so I think there's that sense of what might have been, and Galveston never really shared in the great booms that Houston and Dallas and the rest of Texas had. It's in the minds of the people of Galveston because there has always been ever since 1900 a reluctance of people in Galveston to invest in their hometown. But I think most of the damage is unseen. Galveston did all the financing for the cotton industry, on which the South depended. BURKA: If you know where to look, there are still water marks on the strand which was called at the time the Wall Street of the South.
SIMON: Now when you look at the city today, can you still see the effects of the hurricane? There was not only 6,000 killed, but there was 10,000 missing, never accounted for, and so what that did was, at least in the viewpoint of myself as a Galvestonian-and I think others who've grown up there-it robbed Galveston of its destiny, which was to be a great city, and that was stolen by Houston. On the morning of September the 8th, Galveston would I think be properly described as the most important city in America between New Orleans and San Francisco, and in 24 hours, probably two-thirds of the houses and the buildings were destroyed. The storm struck on September the 8th, 1900. It is still the worst natural disaster in American history, which I guess is something that people in Galveston take a grim pride in. SIMON: First, help us get some idea of the enormity of this catastrophe: 6,000 people-that's considerably more lives killed than so far as we know will have been killed in Hurricane Katrina and perhaps Rita, and in this case it happened in a small metropolitan area. Burka joins us from the studios of KUT in Austin. Galveston is his hometown, a place that he says has been shaped by the hurricanes. Paul Burka is the senior executive editor of Texas Monthly magazine. Since then hurricanes such as Carla, Alicia and now Rita have followed paths ever so close to that city. Galveston, Texas, was destroyed once by a hurricane in 1900 that killed 6,000 people.
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