Kuhn's Wharf

In 1838, Col. Ephraim McLean received wharf privileges from the Galveston City Company and immediately built a wharf at the foot of 18th Street. After its completion he left Galveston to fight Indians on the frontier and pursued other ventures, returning only periodically while the wharf declined in his absence. It was later acquired by William Hendley Co. and J.C. Kuhn, and Kuhn's Wharf became a landing place for large ships, schooners, and Liverpool steamships. After Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, J.C. Kuhn sold his property and departed for Europe. During the Civil War, U.S. naval ships entered Galveston Harbor on October 4, 1862, and Federal troops landed at Kuhn's Wharf on October 8 and marched to the Customs House to raise the Union flag. During the Federal occupation, 350 men of the 42nd Massachusetts Regiment under Colonel Isaac S. Burrell fortified the 400-foot wharf with barricades and held it until the Battle of Galveston on January 1, 1863. That morning Confederate Major General J.B. Magruder launched the recapture of Galveston as cotton-clad ships entered the bay from Buffalo Bayou and troops moved into position near the wharf. A Confederate landing party tried to storm the wharf but withdrew when its ladders proved too short, while the battle in the bay turned with the capture of the Federal ship Harriet Lane. Unable to escape or receive reinforcements, the Federal forces surrendered, and Burrell and his men were marched off as prisoners of war. In later years, nearby Pier 19 served as the city market, where the Mosquito Fleet brought produce, seafood, game, and building materials to the island before a wagon bridge linked it to the mainland, and in the 1970s voters defeated a proposal to convert the pier to cargo operations.

Galveston, Texas · United States