Throughout the 1890s, the wealthy investors ruined the shoreline that would naturally defend Galveston against a massive storm by constructing buildings, hotels, and homes on the beach. They thought they were investing in the city’s future, but they were contributing to its destruction. In September 1900, Galveston’s luck had run out. On September 8, Dr. Isaac Cline, the chief of the Galveston Weather Bureau, and his meteorologists compared information from the National Weather Service to the local conditions and realized that a massive hurricane was quickly approaching the area.
The National Weather Service advised the storm was going to turn, but Cline wasn’t convinced. He raised the alarm, but by then it was too late. Most of the citizens of Galveston did not listen to the warnings because the only sign that a storm was approaching was the high tide. Even if a storm was coming, everyone thought, it wasn’t going to be a bad one; it would be just like all of the ones they had weathered before.
By the next morning, September 9, 1900, the Great Galveston Hurricane made landfall with winds of 145 mph. The strong Category 4 storm assaulted the island for more than 12 hours, destroying almost everything in its path. Some residents had left already, but the people who remained tried to find shelter where they could: in their homes, hospitals, hotels, and churches. As buildings broke apart, the winds transformed their broken pieces into flying missiles, splitting the next building apart, and so on and so on, until there was almost nothing left. By the time the storm had passed, over 6,000 people were dead, thousands more than that were injured, and most of the city was reduced to a pile of dead bodies and debris.
Many of the people of Galveston blamed Dr. Cline for what happened. In 1891, he wrote an article for the Galveston Daily News opposing the construction of a seawall because he didn’t think a major hurricane would ever hit the island. He tried to defend his reputation, claiming that as soon as he realized the danger, he warned people about the storm, telling visitors to leave and everyone who lived close to the water to find shelter in the larger buildings at the center of the town. No one came to his defense to confirm his story, and his role in the tragedy still stirs up considerable debate. Like everyone in Galveston, he lost a loved one: his wife, expecting their fourth child, died in the storm.
Less than a week after the storm passed, on September 14, 1900, The Galveston Daily News printed the following message to its people:
“The sorrows of the past few days are overwhelming and we all feel them and will continue to feel them so long as we live…wherever they sleep…we will love their memories and recall as long we live the unspeakable and mysterious tragedy which destroyed them. But it must be remembered that we have more than 30,000 living, and many of these are children too young to have their lives and energies paralyzed by the disaster which has overtaken us. Our homes must be rebuilt, our schools repaired, and the natural advantages of the port must sooner or later receive our earnest attention. We have loved Galveston too long and too well to desert her in the hour of misfortune…We must look to the light ahead.”