{"id":255714,"date":"2026-04-18T12:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T12:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/255714\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T12:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T12:58:10","slug":"we-reimagine-texas-citys-growth-without-major-hurricane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/255714\/","title":{"rendered":"We reimagine Texas city’s growth without major hurricane"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sci-fi fans have been rejoicing at the return of For All Mankind, which imagines how the space race (and society in general) might have turned out if the Soviet Union beat NASA to the moon. Much of the Apple TV+ series is set in Houston, but social media recently chewed on another, perhaps equally provocative scenario of local interest: What if the September 1900 hurricane<\/a> that all but wiped out Galveston<\/a> spared the island instead?<\/p>\n

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Mark R. Brown, a city planner in Miami, thinks he might have an answer. Last week, he posted an AI map on X using Mother Nature’s benevolence as a prompt, rendering Galveston as a built-up, so-called ‘Manhattan of the Gulf’: a bustling metropolis of 1.1 million people, boasting 17 Fortune 500 companies, three universities, 40,000 hotel rooms, and a port that handles a whopping 230 tons of cargo annually.<\/p>\n

“Spared from disaster, Galveston continued its Golden Age into the 20th century, growing into the nation’s preeminent Gulf port, a center of finance, immigration, and culture,” one of the map’s captions reads. “Its protected harbor, vibrant downtown, and world-class seawall helped it become a global gateway between the Americas and the world.”<\/p>\n

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What if the massive 1900 hurricane didn’t hit Galveston? It may have grown to be as significant as New Orleans, or even the Manhattan of the Gulf. pic.twitter.com\/VAFexmV6yQ<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Mark R. Brown, AICP, CNU (@CompletedStreet) April 7, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Brown is the author of Human Speed<\/a>, a book recounting his car-free experiences in various cities. Staying on brand, he also created the Car Free America<\/a> blog and writes a Substack of the same name<\/a>. Brown’s map, however, is a little mixed up. He puts the Strand west, not east, of the Interstate 45 causeway. It’s also a little hard to tell whether his “East End Bridge” connects the island with Pelican Island or Bolivar Peninsula. (Eh, AI.)<\/p>\n

A true ‘what if?’<\/p>\n

In any case, Brown’s map revives a question that has been floating in the ether for years, but has rarely been explored in such graphic detail (notwithstanding the odd AI glitch). Once high on the list of the South’s preeminent cities, Galveston went from the “Wall Street of the Southwest” to a tragic cautionary tale of hubris and missed opportunity in what seemed like record time. What happened?<\/p>\n

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Damage from the 1900 hurricane, still the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history<\/p>\n

Visit Galveston<\/p>\n

Islanders certainly had their chances to protect their city against nature’s fury, or at least try. In 1875 and again in 1886, hurricanes severely battered one of Galveston’s leading rivals, the Matagorda Bay port city of Indianola<\/a>. And as it eradicated Indianola, the second storm caused significant damage to Galveston as well.<\/p>\n

But even then, the city’s leaders lacked the political will to push through the kind of ambitious, admittedly costly public-works projects that might have helped shield the island from the 1900 storm. It’s hard not to see at least some parallels with the Coastal Texas Project, the complex, near-mythical flood-control system better known as the Ike Dike.<\/p>\n

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These floodgates would be positioned at the mouth of Galveston Bay as part of the Coastal Texas Project, better known as the ‘Ike Dike.’<\/p>\n

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers<\/p>\n

“I think there was a full awareness of storms,” Galveston Historical Foundation Executive Director and CEO Dwayne Jones told Chron. “I think there was a somewhat cavalier attitude, the same thing that developed in the course of the 20th century before Ike: ‘It’s not gonna happen again,’ or ‘it’s not gonna happen to us,’ or ‘it’s not gonna be the same [intensity],’ or something.”<\/p>\n

A changing Galveston<\/p>\n

Additionally, Jones explained, Galveston’s economic prospects were already beginning to cloud in the years before the 1900 storm. For one thing, the nationwide financial panic of 1893 took the edge off the post-Civil War explosive growth of the island. Many influential islanders also grew enamored of the City Beautiful movement, the architectural trend emphasizing wide boulevards and lavish parks that rose to prominence after the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.<\/p>\n

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Bishop’s Palace owner and island big shot Walter Gresham successfully lobbied Congress for money to deepen Galveston’s harbor in the early 1890s, which also planted the seeds for the Houston Ship Channel’s creation about 20 years later.<\/p>\n

Illumine Photographic Services\/Visit Galveston<\/p>\n

The crowded tenement blocks and unsightly factories that might have intensified Galveston’s urbanization were definitely not part of this plan.<\/p>\n

“Leadership in Galveston really would have been focusing more on that sort of creating a beautiful city rather than kind of creating this incredible, powerful resource,” Jones said.<\/p>\n

Other commercial currents helped curb Galveston’s development. In the early 1890s, Bishop’s Palace owner Walter Gresham successfully lobbied Congress to deepen the city’s harbor, which allowed larger vessels to dock there\u2014but also, in the next decade or so, planted the seeds for the Houston Ship Channel’s creation. Galveston also stubbornly clung to the cotton exports that had made it so wealthy for perhaps a beat too long, whereas “it felt like Houston was opening itself up” to a bigger variety of trade, Jones said.<\/p>\n

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Spindletop and Houston’s growth<\/p>\n

By 1900, in fact, Houston’s population had already surpassed Galveston’s. The Spindletop oil discovery near Beaumont the next year kick-started Houston’s growth into the world energy capital we know today. Its location further inland made Houston a natural transportation hub, particularly for rail, and the scrubby coastal plains surrounding the city gave it a nearly inexhaustible supply of land for future housing developments.<\/p>\n

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The Houston Ship Channel in 2019<\/p>\n

Brett Comer\/Houston Chronicle\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The handful of families that called the shots in Galveston, meanwhile, had a vested interest in limiting that city’s growth to a degree they could control. As long as they stayed in charge, which they did at least well into the 1950s and ’60s, they liked Galveston just the way it was.<\/p>\n

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“Lots of Galvestonians traveled to New York and to Boston and to Europe, and they were very familiar with bigger cities,” Jones said. “They could have made those choices, but they weren’t making those choices before the storm.”<\/p>\n

After the 1900 storm, naturally, the question of whether Galveston would ever become a serious rival to Manhattan, or even Houston, was moot. The sandy island soil makes large-scale construction difficult and expensive, an issue developers contend with to this day. Eventually, it leaned into the assets that continue to make it a natural tourist destination\u2014by way of the wild and woolly ‘Free State of Galveston’ years\u2014and is, for the most part, quite happy it did not become Houston. Shall we count the ways?<\/p>\n