The Storm that Changed Everything: The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 (Sep 10, 2023)

Texas’ coastline is on the Gulf of Mexico. Whether one was a native Carib during the prehistory times, a Spanish colonizer, an 18th and 19th century plantation baron, one of the enslaved people who toiled for their profits, or a resident of the modern cities that ring its expanse, everyone knew one thing. Anyone who has spent any time on the coast knows, as the old Texan vernacular would say, “the 'Gulf' is bad for hurricanes.” The end of summer always reminds us that while “hurricane season” runs from the first of June until November 1, quite often the most destructive and powerful storms strike in late August and early September. While the Gulf Coast has experienced a number of documented huge and vicious storms—from the 1919 storm that left almost 1000 dead in Key West to Camille and Cecilia in the 1960s, Andrew in 1992, and Katrina and Ike in the 2000s, no tropical event killed more people, or very likely had more long range impact, than the Great Storm of 1900 that leveled and virtually destroyed Galveston.

When dawn broke on September 7, 1900, Galveston began another day that seemed like it would be just another in a long string of what had been an oppressively hot and muggy summer. Galvestonians were used to such days and, as the sun rose, they moved out of their homes to workplaces, stores, and perhaps a few to greet the surf on the beach. Galveston, in 1900, was one of the most prosperous cities in Texas, a financial powerhouse that was often called the “Wall Street of the South” because of the presence of so many financial houses, banks, and factors that mostly served the export of cotton and other such produce of Texas’ agricultural economy. Galveston’s wharves teemed with enterprise, and the city held the promise that the best was likely to come as it had positioned itself to not just be the chief port of Texas, but perhaps grow into the most profitable one in the United States. That shining potential, however, would largely be stunted by the time the day ended, on September 8, as most of the city lay in ruins, the victim of what was then and remains the deadliest hurricane in terms of loss of life in American history.

Meteorologists of the day had been tracking the storm that would hit Galveston for more than a week, but they did not have the sophisticated technology and data that we have today, which limited the hurricane forecasting capabilities that September. For weather professionals, it was almost “guess work.” The chief of the United States Weather Bureau in Galveston, an earnest and capable man named Isaac Cline, had plotted the storm as it moved off the coast of Africa, swept just north of Cuba on September 4, and then began a northeastwardly track across the upper Gulf. Given his training and the rudimentary equipment and knowledge of the day, Cline predicted that the huge tropical cyclone’s eye would come ashore well north and east of Galveston in the mostly uninhabited region between his island home and the Sabine River. Still, Galveston would no doubt get swiped by the storm’s edges, have some high winds, and heavy rain and surf. So, Cline raised storm-warning flags on the top of the building that housed the Weather Service and headed to his home, a short walk from the city’s East Beach.

Cline and the rest of the Galveston residents were living in a time which had produced few hurricanes, and even fewer—an 1893 storm that drowned and killed almost 2,000 in Louisiana and Mississippi, and the big 1886 storm that had ended the existence of Indianola, Texas south of Galveston, produced events that could be called catastrophic. Perhaps the lack of hurricanes in the last twenty years made Galvestonians complacent, or perhaps the lack of knowledge was something that had luckily not led to a deadly result in recent years, made people not take that much notice. Most Galvestonians—including Cline—went about their day and early night with little thought about lay in store for them.

The Great Hurricane of 1900 took a tack more southerly and a bit more toward the west just after noon on September 7. The wind began to blow stronger that afternoon and early evening, and the barometer began to fall as well. Rain bands blew across the island just after midnight on September 8, and became even more heavy as the night moved toward dawn. By four o’clock in the morning, the Gulf of Mexico—driven by a massive more than twenty-foot storm surge—had begun to essentially swallow up the entirety of Galveston Island. The water rose even higher and became even more destructive as the day moved from darkness to light. As the waters raged and destroyed homes and buildings, people fought for their lives throughout the morning, afternoon, and evening. Many would lose that battle.

When the storm moved on, and the clouds broke as September 8 became September 9, Galveston had gone from being that prosperous city of 37,000 residents—one of the largest in Texas—to one in which more than half its structures were completely wiped away; more than 90% of the ones that remained were damaged. Most tragic and heartbreaking was that 6,000 people lay dead in what remains the largest loss of life in a single natural disaster in American history. Galveston, while it would not fade from existence like Indianola did in the 1880s, would never really recover what it once was. The civic leaders of its rival city to the north would use the Hurricane of 1900 to press for and secure the funding and impetus for building the Houston Ship Channel, which would grow into that leading port that Galveston had hoped it would become. Galveston would rebuild and, in a major undertaking, raise the level of the island by more than six feet and construct a massive seawall that would protect the city from later storms. But it would take decades for Galveston to recover its population, and it would fade from the dynamic city it had been to—until recently—a sleepy fishing and beach town perched on the edge of one of the greatest cauldrons for tropical storms in the world.

The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu; www.easttexashistorical.org.