The 1900 Galveston Storm: United States’ First Modern Natural Disaster

The official hurricane season for the Atlantic region, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), begins on June 1 and ends on November 30. In a thirty-year climate period, from 1991 to 2020, each season, on average, has had fourteen named tropical storms and ten named hurricanes, with three of those hurricanes considered major, either Category 3, 4, or 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.¹

In 2024, the proper names of these severe weather events are familiar ones. In June there was Hurricane Albert, and then Beryl. In July there was Chris. In August there was Debbie, and then Hurricane Ernesto. In September, Francine, Gordon, Helene, Isaac, Joyce, and Kirk. In October, Leslie, and then Milton. The names of hurricanes are assigned following a six-list rotation of names created in 1979 by the World Meteorological Organization. The origins of these names—English, Spanish, and French—were chosen to reflect the geographical coverage and languages of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and North Atlantic. Prior to 1979, hurricanes were christened on an ad-hoc basis after religious figures, geography, or given women’s names.

With over a month remaining in the 2024 season, and with recovery efforts ongoing in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina following Helene—the most severe hurricane to hit the US mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005—and in Florida following Milton, there is still time for Hurricane Nadine, the next name on the list.

The 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season was predicted by the NOAA to be “above normal” due to warmer-than-average ocean temperatures and precipitation and cooling patterns.² But, what might be “normal” or even “above normal” when hurricanes—some bringing a catastrophic loss of life, property, and culture—occur in areas that are still recovering from the effects of a previous hurricane? For survivors affected by these events directly, recovery means coping with the emotional toll of a disaster while simultaneously navigating the paperwork and logistics required by insurance companies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for aid. For the public who experiences natural disasters across different types of media, the consumption of content on hurricanes, floods, and storms and their effects can lead to a level of extreme fatigue. With each new named storm comes a new normal of anxiety about its effect.

Information on natural disasters also cycles abnormally. Within the churn of social media posts on Hurricane Helene came a posted, commented, and reposted anonymous quote, accompanied by an image or video of a person filming rapidly encroaching floodwaters on their phone, “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”³ At present, FEMA is responding to eighteen different federal disaster declarations, from New Mexico to Vermont.

When did this cycle begin? Scientists have determined that global warming began to contribute to the change in climate in the early 1830s, after the industrialization of human society began to produce CO₂ in earnest. It would be a hundred years until global temperature rise would be tracked, and another fifty before the public would become fully aware of the effects of the Anthropocene.

Climate science is based on broad patterns, not individual events. Yet, one event, the 1900 Storm in Galveston, Texas, a hurricane without a name, was the first major natural disaster of the modern era in the US, with a recovery and mitigation effort that matched the intensity and scale of the hurricane’s destruction. Like contemporary natural disasters, the 1900 Storm laid bare the social and economic inequities of the people it affected. Like contemporary natural disasters, it was unavoidable as an event, and in the media.

The 1900 Storm was, and still in ways is, the worst natural disaster ever recorded in US history. Nearly 8,000 people perished, and two-thirds of the city of Galveston was destroyed.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Galveston, Texas, was a young and prosperous city. Its location on the northwestern coast of the Gulf of Mexico made it an ideal coastal port, particularly for cotton, where it ranked second in exports nationwide.⁴ Steamships from Europe, Japan, and Cuba all docked at the port, transforming the city into a place of diverse languages and culture. Internationalism and commerce brought technology to Galveston, the first city in the state of Texas with gas lights, electricity, and telephones. Seventeen public water fountains provided Galvestonians with drinking water, and a streetcar moved them across the city. The streets were lined with oleanders and palm trees, not native to the area but able to thrive in the subtropical climate.

The population of over 40,000 enjoyed a high per capita income, and in addition to being a wealthy city, it was also one full of arts and entertainment. A Mardi Gras celebration had occurred yearly since 1867, and the city hosted houses of worship across dominations. With Gulf breezes and sandy ocean beaches, as well as a proximity to inland Texas cities, Galveston became a recreational destination. Bathhouses lined the beaches, and entertainment venues hosted dancing and music.

Yet, in 1900, one fifth of the population—Black Galvestonians—were unable to drink at the public fountains or attend public school, and experienced violence and intimidation on a daily basis while only being able to access the lowest paying, highest labor jobs, along with the lowest quality housing. Mexican immigrants faced similar circumstances.

The characteristics that made Galveston such a successful port city—its coastal location on a long barrier island—also made it vulnerable to the unpredictable nature of the sea. Streets and alleys flooded when tides were high, and at the city’s highest point, at Broadway Street, the city rose only nine feet above sea level.

Galveston also had an office of the US Weather Bureau, established just ten years earlier, which would both send and receive information from other bureau offices and Washington DC via telephone and telegraph, which allowed information on weather downwind to travel quickly to places upwind in order for weather conditions to be tracked, but also to allow communities to prepare for an event of severe weather.

Through a Night of Horrors, Voices from the 1900 Galveston Storm, a collection of the accounts of the storm’s survivors, includes dispatches from the Galveston Weather Bureau, which noted that it had received information on a tropical storm moving Galveston’s way through Cuba and then Florida in the days leading up to Saturday, September 8, 1900. Flags were hoisted on Friday to alert Galvestonians of a severe storm, and the Galveston Bureau dispatch report noted a “rough sea with heavy southeast swells during afternoon and evening.”⁵ On Saturday afternoon, the Galveston Bureau reported high winds, “probably reaching 120 or 130 miles per hour.” No wind readings were taken after the afternoon report, as the equipment was blown down from the roof of the Galveston Bureau offices. Rain pelted the city and continued into the night.

Yet, it was the sea that would harm Galveston the most. When a hurricane occurs offshore, the wind causes the water below to churn. In open water, this event is barely visible, but as it begins to approach the shore, interacting with the ocean floor, the ocean floor pushes the energy upward, causing the water to surge upward and inland, causing a “storm surge” that has the potential to intensify with high tide.

On Galveston’s seashore, the tide began to swell heavily in the morning, overflowing parts of the city three to four blocks from the beach, causing the streetcar to cease the running of its circuit. Employees of the Galveston Bureau urged Galvestonians to seek higher ground. “Such high water and opposing winds were never observed previously” the report continues. At 7:30 pm, a sudden rise of four feet inundated the city. The volume and velocity of this water heaved over everything in its path, drowning all manner of inanimate and animate objects, and turning building materials into lethal projectiles.

Receding water revealed a muddy array of debris and bodies of the dead, piled together in mounds by the force of the water. The storm had destroyed Galveston’s infrastructure of telephone and telegraph wires, and railroad lines that had not come undone were blocked with wreckage. Public buildings, hospitals, and schools had been wrecked. At the port, boats ripped from their anchors, tearing their way inland and pulverizing buildings before being pulled out to sea. Churning water destroyed 3,600 buildings—two thirds of the city—and 8,000 people lost their lives.

At the turn of the twentieth century, relief after a disaster came ad hoc from governments and from the formation and fundraising of relief or aid societies. President William McKinley directed the Secretary of War to supply rations and tents to Galveston, while Mayor Walter C. Jones called a meeting and formed the Central Relief Committee for Galveston Storm Sufferers. The group formed subcommittees to address individual aspects of the emergency, including a burial committee, a building committee, and a hospital committee.

The city was without drinking water. An underground water main had gone unharmed, but the pumping station was destroyed. A rebuilt water supply system provided some relief, and the twelve individual ward chairmen each found a house or general store where goods purchased by the Central Relief Committee could be distributed and information could be shared. Housing had been destroyed, leaving survivors to stay anywhere they could, including damaged churches and schools. Crews assembled to clear debris from the streets and alleys in exchange for rations.

Like modern disasters, rumors abounded and focused on people of color and immigrants. Galveston declared martial law, and a volunteer militia was organized to protect the city from looters looking for food and provisions. Also like modern disasters, those looking to acquire supplies were not opportunists, but survivors trying to stay alive through the ordeal. Burying the 8,000 who lost their lives was a difficult endeavor, done often by Black laborers who were forced by members of the volunteer militia, at gunpoint, to bury bodies in the ground and at sea.

The American National Red Cross arrived nine days after the storm struck, and donations began to pour in from across the nation and the world from an array of public and private sources, including Andrew Carnegie, Standard Oil, and the New York Chamber of Commerce, sending help to restore the “New York of the Gulf.”⁶ The City of Chicago sent two portable hospitals, which were put to immediate use, and a Red Cross warehouse began distributing clothing and shoes.⁷ A tent city was established on the beach, with recycled tents from the Civil War and Spanish-American War supplied by the US Army. Inland, families began building temporary shelters out of salvaged building materials. An appeal from Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross, urged those wishing to donate to the relief effort to supply Galveston with lumber, hardware, and roofing materials so that more permanent housing could be built before winter.

Commerce and city services returned quickly once the debris was cleared. Electricity was restored to streets and commercial buildings after a week, and telegraph and telephone service shortly after. While boats and their cargo at the port had been destroyed, the port itself was in remarkable condition, providing the transportation of goods and people days before the first of the three railroad bridges into Galveston was repaired. Upland, streets like Broadway and The Strand had fared better than areas of the city closer to the Gulf, allowing businesses on The Strand to open quickly. By the end of October, four white schools—but only one Black school out of the three that had existed before the storm—had reopened. This inequity echoed across the recovery efforts. The Central Relief Committee had no Black members, and no specific relief efforts were designated for Black Galvestonians, even as relief efforts focused on the care of individual groups of people that might have been uniquely harmed by the hurricane, such as orphaned children. Black Galvestonians had lost what little political capital they had gained since the Emancipation Proclamation was enforced in Texas at Galveston on June 19, 1865, two years after it had been signed.

Months after the storm, a group of women representing churches and benevolent institutions, as well as the American National Red Cross, formed the Women’s Health Protective Association. Centered around sanitation and public health, the organization quickly gained political power and began organizing around the bill to adopt a new city commission form of government. It would be this commission that would endeavor to develop long-term plans to mitigate the effect of any future storm. The commission appointed a board of engineers to study the conditions of the city prior to 1900, as well as the effects that the hurricane had on each area of Galveston.

The resulting report focused on the two components that, when working in unison, made the destruction so profound. First, the city’s low sea level made it prone to flooding, and second, the currents and wave action from the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast, and Galveston Bay to the north, exacerbated the damage. The board of engineers would ultimately recommend the raising of the city’s grade, as well as the construction of a miles-long seawall, with the top to be “17 feet above mean low water, or 1.3 feet higher than the highest point reached by the water in the storm of 1900.”⁸ Galvestonians were eager to see the construction of the seawall completed as a civic project that would ensure that investment and commerce would return to the city, and remain permanently.

The Galveston seawall would have a curved face of Portland cement, designed so that waves and storm surge would be forced upward. The seawall would extend for three miles across the island. Sheet piling would be placed at the foot of the curve, going down forty to fifty feet and preventing the wall from shifting, and covered with sandstone boulders placed three feet deep and twenty-seven feet outward. The seawall would be built in sections within wooden forms that would be removed once the concrete had hardened. The first pilings were placed in October 1902, and by July 1904, a three-and-a-half-mile section of the seawall had been completed. A set of concrete monuments was placed at Seawall Boulevard and 23rd Street in 1912 to commemorate its construction.⁹

A Grade Raising Board was formed to direct the raising of streets, avenues, sidewalks, alleys, and lots. Financed by the City of Galveston with funds from the State of Texas, the grade raising also required the relocation of water and gas lines, as well as sewers and street railway lines. This raising was performed by excavating each line and lifting them up progressively a small amount at a time. In order to deliver fill material to the sites where the infrastructure raising would occur, a temporary canal was built through the city to deliver dredging material from the port into the island. Civic and public buildings were raised using public money, causing buildings as big as a school or a church sanctuary to be lifted into into the air using a stilt system, with some raised on screw jacks that would be cranked as they rose.

Privately owned properties would have to be raised with private money, as home and property insurance wouldn’t become widespread for another fifty years. Yet, the community was willing to participate in mitigation measures—and pay for them. House and building moving professionals flocked to Galveston, creating a competitive industry that would keep prices for house lifting low. Galvestonians unwilling to raise the grade of their houses filled in first floors or turned them into basements. Walls, doors, and windows could be removed from the first floor of buildings, leaving structural members remaining. As this work occurred, a system of catwalks allowed users to travel from building to building.

By 1910, the grade raising had been completed, and Galveston at large had economically and culturally recovered from the 1900 Storm. On August 17, 1915, a storm of equal intensity to the 1900 Storm would test the seawall and the grade raising, demonstrating that the mitigation efforts were Galveston’s salvation.

Based on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale—a one to five rating based on a hurricane’s wind speed developed in 1971 and used to estimate potential property damage—the 1900 Storm would be classified as a Category 4 Hurricane, with an expectation that catastrophic damage will occur, including damage to well-built frame homes and significant power outages. As a comparison, Hurricane Katrina reached a Category 5 in 2005. When Hurricane Harvey hit Galveston in 2017, it did so as a Category 4 hurricane, with the seawall providing a level of protection against more extensive damage. Hurricane Helene, now the subject of a long-term recovery effort across multiple states, was classified as a Category 4.

The unprecedented recovery Galveston experienced after the 1900 Storm was made possible by the convergence of engineering and technology in a civil project that was broadly supported by its citizens, yet not all of Galveston’s citizens were able to benefit from the economic benefits that accompanied the newly fortified island. Like those of lower socioeconomic status today, the status of Black Galvestonians at the turn of the twentieth century meant that they were disproportionally affected by the effects of the 1900 Storm and had fewer financial resources than white Galvestonians to aid in recovery. Additionally, no institution or organization had formed to specifically aid Black Galvestonians. In 1902, an amendment to the state constitutions charged Texans an annual poll tax for the right to vote.¹⁰ The $1.50 tax was beyond the means of many, including Black Galvestonians, who like Black Americans across the state, lost even more political power.

Nevertheless, in today’s political environment, where many US citizens see climate change as overblown and are unable to consider alternative sources of energy, it is difficult to see contemporary mitigation efforts occurring in such a coordinated manner like the recovery after the 1900 Storm. For places like Galveston in particular, disaster recovery efforts from the early twentieth century are considered a part of the city’s collective history, and “storms” are a yearly occurrence during hurricane season.

Hurricanes have always affected Galveston, but as our climate warms, these hurricanes have strengthened and intensified, creating a new normal where the recovery after one is barely finished before another causes another round of damages. Places that were once thought to be insulated from catastrophic climate events are now experiencing them as well, closer and closer to where you are, until you are the one filming it.