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The hurricane of 1900 that devastated Galveston remains one of the most powerful storms in our nation’s history. It ranks as the deadliest natural disaster in North American history and one of the most costly. Surprisingly though, scholarship about the storm is not extensive. Much of the literature about the storm in 1900 falls under the “fiction based on fact” genre. Authors such as Kristine Brennan and Donna Latham use the storm as the setting for their juvenile fiction works, The Galveston Hurricane and Hurricane!: the 1900 Galveston Night of Terror, respectively. Scholarly works tend to focus on the characters present during the storm, the devastation it caused, and the changes made in the storm’s aftermath.
Nearly a half century after the storm, Albert Davis published a comprehensive explanation of the changes made to Galveston from an engineering perspective to promote the safety of the island. In the subsequent years, the wall has been further extended, thereby slightly outdating Davis’ 1951 article, but he still provides an in depth analysis of the engineering accomplishments behind the island’s safety feature. An additional academic work, written by Neil L. Frank, focuses on the socioeconomic impact of hurricanes through the case study of the 1900 storm in Galveston. This article, published by the American Geophysical Union, discusses the lessons learned and warnings that remain unheeded by the people of Galveston both in 1900 and during the present day. Frank acknowledges the increased safety created by the seawall and elevating the city, but he ultimately criticizes the people of Galveston for continuing to rebuild areas that are destroyed from recent, weaker storms. Worth noting, however, is that after Frank’s article written in 2003, the powerful Hurricane Ike caused extensive damage to Galveston in 2009.
One such scholarly work by Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm, encompasses all three areas of focus outlined above. Larson depicts the storm through various surviving accounts with an emphasis on Isaac Cline, the area’s Weather Bureau serviceman. Larson uses survivor’s stories to provide personal experiences before, during, and after the storm and to humanize the destruction experienced by Galvestonians. According to the Galveston Historical Society, John Edward Weems published a more factual account of the storm with less emphasis on the National Weather Bureau. Weems approached the subject with a similar methodology as Larson and relied on survivors’ accounts to create his depiction of the storm.
While these works emphasize the devastation caused by the storm, I chose to emphasize the buildings that survived the incredible storm. Larson’s novel piqued my interest and I felt that not enough emphasis was given to the survivors of the storm. Furthermore, I questioned why some buildings survived a massive storm surge and high winds while others did not. Isaac Cline’s home represented the future of beachfront property because his house was elevated on stilts. The stilts allow the water to flow relatively unimpeded instead of ramming up against a solid foundation of a typical house. The buildings I chose to research, however, were not on stilts. They represented the typical building model with a foundation attached to the ground, yet somehow withstood the storm’s wrath.
The hurricane that struck Galveston in 1900 always interested me. My fascination began with a show on The Weather Channel called The Wrath of God. This show depicted the most horrible storms our nation encountered. My family owned property on Topsail Island in North Carolina, and a vivid memory I have in 1996 is of my father standing in the back of moving truck collecting canned goods outside our local grocery store for the victims of hurricane Fran. He wore a white shirt with black lettering that said, “Fran, was it something we said?” I guess I was just the adorable poster child used to attract sympathy, but I’ll never forget being in awe of how many people donated cans, loose change, and other non-perishables to help the relief efforts. So, I asked my dad what hurricanes were. He told me they were storms so powerful that humans could not control them and they hurt many people. Maybe it’s my pessimistic nature or maybe it’s because I’m fascinated with powerful aspects of nature, but I wanted to learn everything about hurricanes, tornadoes, and other natural disasters.
Because the Galveston hurricane of 1900 ranks number one in lives lost, this storm attracted my attention. As mentioned above, Larson’s book further probed my inquires to read other articles and books on the subject. Furthermore, to obtain more information for this project, I contacted the Galveston Historical Society. The people I spoke to and e-mailed were incredibly helpful with passing on information pertinent to my topic. I relied heavily on their spoken word and the information presented on their websites to obtain my data.