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Cotton exports, shipping, and commerce
- Thanks to its strategic location on the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston quickly became a major port city and a gateway to the American West. By the mid-19th century, it was the largest and wealthiest city in Texas, with a thriving economy based on cotton exports, shipping, and commerce.
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In 1836, Michel Branamour Menard, a native of Canada, along with several associates, purchased 4,605 acres (18.64 km 2) of land for $50,000 from the Austin Colony to found the town that would become the modern city of Galveston.
Thanks to its strategic location on the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston quickly became a major port city and a gateway to the American West. By the mid-19th century, it was the largest and wealthiest city in Texas , with a thriving economy based on cotton exports, shipping, and commerce.
In September 1900, the small but prosperous island city of Galveston experienced what remains the worst natural disaster in United States history. It is well known that the hurricane devastated the island and claimed the lives of approximately 8,000 of its citizens.
- Pirates
- Immigration
- Wall Street of The South
- The Birthplace of Juneteenth
Later visitors included corsairs, like the French Jean Lafitte, who built the small colony of Campeche in 1817. Ever the privateer, he used this as a base to raid Spanish merchant ships that passed through the Gulf. He fled after a decade, burning down the community he built (his treasures are rumored to be buried on the Island).
Founded in 1838, Galveston established prosperity through a natural deep-water port, expansion of trade routes throughout the region, and development of industry, such as cotton, in the decades leading up to the Great Storm of 1900. The people of Galveston Island would find themselves as a fundamental piece of the state and region's growth and dive...
In 1836, Canadian fur trader Michel B. Menard purchased seven square miles of land, which became the City of Galveston. It was the same year Texas gained independence from Mexico and became a republic. Other great changes followed, business flourished, and Galveston became a major U.S. commercial center and one of the largest ports in the United St...
Juneteenth is a national holiday that signifies the celebration of the end of slavery for southern slaves in Galveston two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. This historic event holds a special place in the United States and African American history, but the richness of Juneteenth or June 19, 1865 goes well beyond celebrating Ema...
The mid 1870s to the mid 1890s was the apex of Galveston's prosperity. The Strand area became the Wall Street of the Southwest. Fortunes were made in cotton, mercantile house, banks, publishing and printing, flour and grain mills, railroads, land development, and shipping.
Oct 21, 2024 · Two factors dislodged Galveston from its leading commercial position: the rise of competitive Texas ports, notably Houston, and a destructive hurricane on September 8, 1900, in which more than 8,000 lives were lost and much of the city was destroyed.
Sep 13, 2018 · The citizens of Galveston, Texas, had achieved unprecedented economic prosperity. The city, built on a shallow, sandy island 2 miles (1.2 kilometers) offshore, had become the state’s leading center of trade, exporting some 1.7 million bales of cotton annually.
