Galveston Seawall

The Galveston Seawall is a ten-mile concrete barrier that runs along the entire Gulf side of the island, built after the catastrophic 1900 hurricane and extended several times since. At 17 feet high and wide enough for a car to drive on the top, it is an extraordinary piece of infrastructure — and it has worked: subsequent hurricanes have struck Galveston and caused damage, but none has repeated the scale of 1900.

Seawall Boulevard runs along the top and is backed by hotels, seafood restaurants, souvenir shops, and a continuous parade of beach traffic in summer. The beach below the seawall is accessible by steps and ramps at regular intervals; it is wide, flat, and backed by the wall's bulk rather than dunes, which gives it an unusual industrial-scale aesthetic. Sunset over the Gulf from the seawall is reliably good. The 61st Street Fishing Pier extends into the Gulf at mid-island and is popular with local fishermen year-round.

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After the 1900 hurricane killed more people in a single day than any other natural disaster in American history, Galveston built the world's largest seawall — 17 feet high, 16 feet wide at the base — and raised the entire island behind it by dredging sand from the Gulf and pumping it under every building in the city. More than 2,000 structures were jacked up on stilts, the sand pumped beneath them, then lowered back down. The city grade was raised by as much as 17 feet at the center.

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