Galveston has a fascinating and storied past: from devastating storms to civil war battles. Before the 1900 storm, Galveston was the second richest city per capita in the United States and was even dubbed the “Wall Street of the South” due to its flourishing banking industry and the retail success of The Strand.

A fascinating but somber fact is that Galveston was the site of the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history: the Great Storm of 1900. To prevent a repeat of the 6,000+ deaths, the city underwent a staggering engineering feat called the "Grade Raising." Engineers built a massive 17-foot-high seawall and literally jacked up over 2,000 buildings—including a 3,000-ton church—using hand-turned screw jacks to raise the entire island's elevation by an average of 5 feet. Before this tragedy, Galveston was known as the "Wall Street of the South" and was the second richest city per capita in America. It was also the birthplace of Juneteenth; on June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived on the island to announce that all enslaved people in Texas were free, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. This unique blend of catastrophic resilience and profound civil rights history makes the island a critical cultural pillar of the American South.