Is Galveston Tx below sea level?

Answer 1

Depends on where you are in Galveston. Officially, the city is 10 feet above sea water, but some points are much lower. As a site dedicated to the 1900 flood notes: after the great flood of 1900, "the feat of raising an entire city began with three engineers hired by the city in 1901 to design a means of keeping the gulf in its place. Along with building a seawall, Alfred Noble, Henry M. Robert and H.C. Ripley recommended the city be raised 17 feet at the seawall and sloped downward at a pitch of one foot for every 1,500 feet to the bay." Everyone had to pay for raising their own buildings, and the city paid to raise all vacant land. The seawall built by the Army Corps of Engineers was supposed to be 17 feet tall, but ended up 15.4 feet tall because they took their measurements from mean tide vs. sea level. As a result of all of this, some of Galveston is only a foot above sea level, but the majority is between 12 and 17 feet above sea level, which is why forecasters raised the dire warnings and certain death alarms when they realized that Hurricane Ike would probably peak at 22 feet above sea level.