West Galveston Island

West Galveston Island entered world history in the sixteenth century through the report of the Spanish soldier Cabeza de Vaca, who was shipwrecked there in 1528, and it was also visited by the French explorer La Salle in 1685. The second known Caucasian to live there was the buccaneer Jean Lafitte, who fought the Karankawa Indians for the site he chose as the operating base for his pirate fleet in 1815 or 1816. In the 1820's, West Island became a debarkation point for illegal slave ships, and afterward more humane and civilized traffic came there. In the 1850's, stagecoach service ran from Galveston to Old Velasco, now Freeport, on a West Beach road with a ferry at San Luis Pass. An important lace manufacturing concern was located there, and by 1885 the Galveston and Western Railway carried visitors by the hundreds to a race track near the center of the island. Since 1957, West Island has rapidly become a major recreational and resort area, with leisure homes fronting the Gulf, the canals, and the bay, while enough wilderness remains to attract migratory shore birds, and more than 95 percent of the known species in America spend some time on the island each year.

Galveston, Texas · United States