In 1899 Galveston was the great commercial and shipping emporium of Texas. Railroads and river boats linked the vast and growing interior to the rest of the country, and world, through its ports. It made quite a bit of money sitting astride this trade. Galveston had an opera house, schools, hospitals, hotels, electric lights, an opera house. The Strand was "the Wall Street of the South". Population and wealth were growing, and Galveston looked every bit the part of a major city in the making.

Houston, meanwhile, had been founded a decade or so after Galveston as a real estate speculation by a pair of brothers from New York. The Allen brothers found the furthest inland point on Buffalo Bayou that steamships could access from the Gulf, and figured that would make a fine regional transit hub. With a bit of showmanship (or, perhaps, flim-flam) they named the town after Sam Houston, then the President, in hope of attracting the new government. Somehow they managed to actually set up the town before the Congress arrived. But they weren't very impressed by the muddy year-old collection of shacks, and would shortly move elsewhere. But Houston also grew as a commercial hub, shipping cotton and produce to Galveston and Beaumont and selling staples coming from those ports on to farmers in the area.

But where Houston was a local hub, Galveston was a regional one. And one could imagine it might stay that way.

Then on Sept 8, 1900, Galveston disappeared. A hurricane was known to have passed over Cuba, but its direction was not well known. It made landfall directly on Galveston as a major Category 4 storm. The wind and rain were severe, but worse was the storm surge of 8-12ft that rolled over the low-lying barrier island and destroyed almost everything.

"Partial destruction" is the best category a later survey map would assign to structures, with "total destruction" being at least half of the city. Every bridge and telegraph line to the island was destroyed. A steamship was found 2 miles inland. Of a population short of 40,000 some 8-12,000 died and another 10,000 were left homeless. Many would simply leave, having nothing left.

The residents who stayed rebuilt the city. A new 17 foot seawall, 10 miles long, would protect them from future storms, and the whole of the city was raised (what buildings survived, that is) to the new level, and eventually rebuilt. (There are today only a handful of pre-1900 buildings on Galveston, making them notable tourist attractions.)

But in spite of the ambitious rebuilding, Galveston never really recovered. Houston had been damaged, but nothing like; there were 2 casualties there. All that trade had to go somewhere, and Houston, as a port available to fairly large vessels, but well inland, was well positioned to take up the slack... and keep it. The following year, oil was discovered at Spindletop, and Houston was well-positioned to take advantage of the new business, where Galveston, still in shambles (and not as close to the oilfield) was not.

Houston would continually expand Buffalo Bayou into the Houston Ship Channel to allow larger and larger ships, its railroad and oil connections were better, and it had plenty of room to grow, so there was not much reason for business to return to Galveston. By the 1920s it was clear Galveston was no longer the regional hub, or anything like, and it began to reinvent itself as a tourist destination.