“Yes, really. Before the storm of 1900 the highest point in the city was only six feet above tide level. Now it is nineteen feet. After the sea-wall was done, they raised all the buildings and the street-car tracks, built elevated plank sidewalks, dredged twenty million cubic yards of sand from the Gulf and pumped it into the city until it filled up to the proper level. Then they rebuilt foundations, repaved the streets, replanted the trees and shrubs, and resowed the grass.”
“Gee whiz!” exclaimed Roy. “I never heard of anything like it. Why, it’s wonderful, wonderful! I thought New York was great, but this beats anything I saw there. Just to think of raising a whole city nineteen feet in the air! Why, that’s as high as a two-story house.”
“It isn’t quite so wonderful as that,” smiled Mr. Anderson. “The nineteen-foot elevation is only on the Gulf side. That point is two hundred feet back from the sea-wall, so that if any water comes over the wall it will run back into the sea. In the other direction the ground slopes toward the Bay, where they raised the level only to eight feet. As the island is about three and a half miles wide, that makes only a very slight grade.”
For some time Roy stood in silent wonder. He was amazed at what the chief engineer had told him. Suddenly he turned to his companion and demanded, “What did they do it for? They’ll probably never have another storm like that. Why, it must have cost a pile of money.”
“It cost millions,” said Mr. Anderson. “But it was worth it. The flood of September 8, 1900, swept over the city to a depth of sixteen feet. People used to live way out this side of the sea-wall, where now you see only tossing water. The entire end of the island for eight blocks inland was washed away, with all the houses. Eight or ten thousand people were drowned and the property loss was many millions. It was the worst catastrophe due to natural causes in the history of America. As for storms, you never can tell. Every fall brings hard ones here in the Gulf. They’ve had some bad ones besides the Galveston flood. In September, 1875, a terrible hurricane swept the city. Late in August, 1886, another awful storm occurred. But the storm of 1900 was the worst ever known. There was a tidal wave then that swept right over the island. If the city was to be safe, it had to be protected somehow. So they built the sea-wall. Such a wave might occur again at any time. You might see one yourself this coming September. There are always bad storms then.”
By this time the Lycoming was close to her dock and Roy was more than astonished at what he could see of the shipping facilities.
“Whew!” he said. “It looks as though they could handle almost as many ships here as they do in New York. I had no idea Galveston was so much of a seaport. There must be miles of wharves. What makes it such a great seaport, anyway?”
“Some years Galveston ranks next to New York in the volume of its shipping,” said the chief engineer, “so that it claims to be the second most important seaport in America. So much of our cotton is shipped by way of Galveston that it is the greatest cotton port in all the world. The greatest cottonseed grinding plant in the world is right on the water-front, where its products can be put directly aboard ships. And the port handles an enormous amount of tropical products like bananas, coffee, sugar, lumber, and corn and cattle from Mexico and Argentina. There are probably sixty or seventy lines of steamboats that run from here. Ships go direct from Galveston to all the important ports in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Cuba. So you see they need vast shipping facilities. There are six miles of wharves here and more than one hundred great ocean freighters can load or unload at one time.”
“Great Cæsar!” ejaculated Roy. “This certainly must be a great city. How big is it, anyway?”