Galveston Was Supposed to Be Texas's Wall Street. What Happened?

In 1880, Galveston was the biggest city in Texas, the port where cotton and money met the Gulf. After the 1900 hurricane, the island built a seventeen-foot seawall and raised its own buildings on jacks and sand. So why did Houston, fifty miles up a muddy bayou, end up with the crown? The answer is in a census table dated three months before the storm. Sources: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/e... https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/e... https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/e... https://www.asce.org/about-civil-engi... https://www.galvestonhistorycenter.or... https://porthouston.com/?p=105 https://www.census.gov/programs-surve... https://www.archives.gov/news/article... Chapters 0:00 Intro 1:04 The Port Behind the Sandbar 5:31 The Storm and the Doubter 8:44 Lifting a City 12:57 The Ditch to Houston 16:48 The Free State of Galveston Narration by a synthetic (AI) voice. Script researched and fact-checked from the sources below. Archival images are public domain or free licenses; maps and charts are made by the channel. Images (item numbers at each archive) Public domain, Library of Congress: Library of Congress; Underwood & Underwood; Historic American Buildings Survey; Blandford & Henningsen; American Stereoscopic Company; Carol M. Highsmith; M. H. (Martin H.) Zahner; American Stereoscopic Company.; Graves, C. H. (Carleton H.), -1943.; Detroit Publishing Co.; Russell Lee; John Vachon Public domain, Wikimedia Commons: Ferd. Ohlendorf; General Graham Granger, b 1821, d 1876; Mathew Benjamin Brady; The Galveston Daily News; Photographer not credited; NOAA Library; Flux55 Maps: Natural Earth (public domain).