Backroads of Texas by Gary Clark

Author:Gary Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Voyageur Press
Published: 2016-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

A family enjoys a walk along the shore at Galveston Island State Park in Galveston.

Night scene of the historic buildings along the Strand in Galveston.

Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge is a popular place with anglers, bird-watchers, and nature lovers.

Stop at Boyd’s Onestop if you’d like a little fresh seafood to eat at one of the picnic tables on the dike.

Drive to Galveston. It would be a shame to drive through here for beaches and seafood restaurants and not stop for an hour or more on the Strand. Park your car near the corner of Twenty-Fifth and Strand to begin a walking tour.

The Galveston Island Railroad Museum is housed in the old Santa Fe Railway Station. Inside are interesting displays, but the real treasures are out back. Vintage engines and railway cars stand on the tracks just as they might have been seen in the 1940s or 1950s. Walk through dining cars and mail cars.

If you can, pull yourself away from this gem and walk along the Strand. The Strand is filled with history but also has outstanding restaurants, gift shops, and hotels. Many of the historic buildings that line the Strand survived the catastrophic hurricane of 1900, among the worst natural disasters in US history. Everything you see still standing also survived the devastation of Hurricanes Ike and Rita in the twenty-first century. Notice the high-water marks on many of the buildings.

Leave the Strand and drive to Seawall Boulevard. The entire island of Galveston is a mere three miles wide at its widest point and twenty-seven miles long. Spanish explorers surveyed the island in 1519, and Cabeza de Vaca was shipwrecked on the island in 1528. The Mexican government established a port of entry here in 1825. Shipping commerce dominated the economy after the Texas war of independence in 1836, and thirty-seven thousand people inhabited the island in 1900.

When a huge hurricane hit the island on September 8, 1900, it covered the island with a 15.7-foot high wall of water. The devastation was horrendous, beyond anything we’ve seen in the United States except perhaps for the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans. A long-range plan was implemented to protect the city from future storms. By 1904, houses had been raised to protect them from flooding, and a three-mile-long seawall that stood seventeen feet above the mean low tide line had been constructed. The seawall is now ten miles long.

Seawall Boulevard changes into Farm to Market 3005 that runs the length of the island. Stop at Galveston Island State Park for access to the Gulf of Mexico. The two-thousand-acre park sweeps over both sides of FM 3005 on the west end of the island, bordered by the Gulf of Mexico to the south and Galveston Bay to the north. Diverse habitats from beaches to marshes, ponds, prairies, and trees yield diverse birds such as water birds, hawks, and songbirds.

From the park headquarters, head east along a short road running parallel to the coastline and looping like a lasso as it borders a marsh.

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