What other American city can claim such a rogue for a founding father? In 1817 debonair privateer Jean Lafitte, evading New Orleans's customs officers, launched a "pirate kingdom" on this 32-mile-long (51km) barrier island in then-Spanish Texas. Sitting at the mouth of a fine natural harbor, Galveston was perfect for his privateering operations, not to mention his sideline as a Spanish spy. U.S. authorities drove Lafitte from the island in 1821—he defiantly burned his settlement to the ground as he fled—but more respectable citizens followed, developing that harbor into Texas's leading port and Galveston into its biggest city.

But that same harbor-mouth location that made Galveston so prized also made it fatally hurricane prone, and on September 8, 1900, the inevitable disaster struck. In the middle of the night, 6m-high (20-ft.) waves crashed over the long, low island, smashing houses into matchwood and hurling residents from their beds. By morning more than 6,000 islanders—one out of every six—were drowned, one-third of its buildings wrecked. It still ranks as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history (get the full story in the film The Great Storm at Galveston's Pier 21 Theater (☎ 409/763-8808; , which also screens a Jean Lafitte documentary).

Although Galveston valiantly rebuilt, erecting a stout 16km-long (10-mile) seawall and raising the entire island with landfill, most businesses relocated to inland Houston. As Houston boomed, Galveston dwindled—so much so that during Prohibition, residents turned to bootlegging and gambling (surely Jean Lafitte would have approved). In 1957 the Texas Rangers charged in to clean up the town, but afterward Galveston languished.

Ironically, that long decline had a silver lining. With real estate development at a standstill, nobody knocked down the gracious Victorian mansions of the East End (north of Broadway, 9th–19th sts.) or the ornate cast-iron facades of the old Strand District 19th–25th sts. between Church St. and the harbor, once dubbed the "Wall Street of the Southwest." In the 1960s and 1970s, a historic restoration movement rescued hundreds of dilapidated gems; walking around these districts today is a time warp experience. Three magnificent East End houses, known as the Broadway Beauties, were opened to the public: the castlelike stone Bishop's Palace 1402 Broadway (☎ 409/762-2475; , built in 1892; the Italianate red-brick Ashton Villa 2328 Broadway (☎ 409/762-3933; , from 1859; and the opulent brick-and-limestone 1895 Moody Mansion 2618 Broadway (☎ 409/762-7668; www.moodymansion.org) . The jewel box 1894 Grand Opera House 2020 Postoffice St. (☎ 409/763-7173; www.thegrand.com) once again hosts live theater. Every May, the Galveston Historical Foundation (☎ 409/765-7834; www.galvestonhistory.org) organizes weekend tours of several Victorian mansions; every December, the Dickens on the Strand festival (☎ 409/765-7834; www.dickensonthestrand.org) packs the streets with merrymaking Galvestonians in crinolines and cutaway coats.

And then—déjà vu all over again—in September 2008 Hurricane Ike swept over that seawall and flooded Galveston anew. Several damaged sites, including Ashton Villa, took months to reopen; downtown's flaking, rusting cast-iron facades landed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's 2009 America's Most Endangered Places list. Galveston's next comeback is still a work in progress, but I'm betting on Lafitte's old pirate kingdom to succeed in style.

Copyright © 2009 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.