Island of Galveston



Grade Raising 1904-1910

Gust Feist Postcard

.....Following the 1900 Storm, Galveston leaders decided to build a seawall and raise the entire city up to prevent another disaster in the future. Virtually every house was put on stilts and dredge material filled in underneath. A company called Goldhart & Bates was contracted to do the dredge work at a rate of 18 1/2 cents per cubic yard. Gas lines, water lines, streetcar tracks, all had to be raised up in a massive effort. At the seawall, buildings were raised 17 feet whilst at Broadway the fill sloped to 10 feet.

.....This was a huge task that involved creating a systems of canals, pipelines, dredges and barges to bring in material to fill in the area to be raised.

.....The project ended up taking six years. 16,321,400 cubic yards of dredged sand from the Gulf was used to raise the island. Islanders got used to walking along a system of planks and trestles over the draining sands.

.....Children actually enjoyed playing in front of the pipes spewing dredge silt!

..... To get the dredge material into the city, a canal 3.5 miles long, 200 feet wide, and 18 feet deep was excavated through the city. The sand was sucked from the bottom of Galveston Bay, transported to pipe-line discharge stations along the canal, and then dispersed via a system of pipes and discharges. A total of five dredges were used.

Dredge Boat Holm, Working in the Grade Raising Canal, Galveston.

End of Discharge Pipe Grade Raising at Galveston, Texas, Trube Photo

Information from 1930 Galveston City Directory