After a devastating hurricane and tidal wave destroyed much of Galveston on Sept. 8, 1900 and left 6000 persons dead, the city appointed a board of three engineers—Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Henry M. Robert, Alfred Noble, and H. C. Ripley—to devise protection from future storms. Their proposal, financed jointly by city, county, and state governments, led to work beginning in 1902 to reduce flood damage by jacking up buildings and upgrading the surface of the entire city to a maximum elevation of 12 feet above sea level. Along the Gulf shore of the island, a solid concrete seawall was built as a shield against high waves. The original section, begun in Oct. 1902, extended 3.3 miles and stood 17 feet high on wooden pilings, backed by a sand embankment and protected in front by stone riprap, with the Gulf side curved outward to keep water from washing over the top. Completed in July 1904, the seawall proved its value in 1915 when a more severe hurricane caused far less damage than the storm 15 years earlier, and it has since been periodically lengthened as Galveston grew into a modern and prosperous city.
