Galveston: Gateway to Texas
Galveston, Galveston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
From the time of the earliest documented history, the Gulf of Mexico has been the main point of entry into Texas. Some settlers of the 1820s even came by keelboat, going ashore along the way to kill game, the same way an overland party would live off the country while traveling. Some settlers did choose to come to Texas by land, but a poor system of wet and rough roads was crossed by countless rivers. In most cases, the rivers were crossed only by costly, ill-tended ferrier, many of which were manned by unscrupulous operators who preyed upon naive Travellers. Galveston in the 19th century was a chief port of entry into Texas. It was sister city to New Orleans, so well-organized was passage from one to the other. Texas ports of entry included the Velasco, Quintana, Lavaca, Indianola, Matagorda, Port Isabel, Houston and Corpus Christi. Yet Galveston - with the best natural harbor between Pensacola and Veracruz - dominated travel both into and out of Texas. This port welcomed statesmen, speculators, teachers, soldiers, clergymen, doctors, merchants, craftsman and tourists. Galveston's prominence among the major ports of entry in North America led to the construction by the United States government of important quarantine and immigration stations that replaced earlier ones built and operated by the City of Galveston and the State of Texas. These stations saw tens of thousands of immigrants enter Galveston. While sone settled within the city and contributed to Galveston's diverse population, most dispersed across Texas and aided in the growth and development of the state. (1965, 2010)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For generations the Gulf of Mexico was the great front door to Texas, and Galveston—blessed with the finest natural harbor between Pensacola and Veracruz—became its busiest gateway. While some settlers braved rough overland roads and predatory ferry operators, most arrived by sea, and Galveston grew as a sister port to New Orleans. Federal quarantine and immigration stations here processed tens of thousands of newcomers who then spread across the state.
Why it matters
Often called the "Ellis Island of the West," Galveston funneled a vast stream of immigrants and settlers into Texas, shaping the state's diverse population and its 19th-century growth.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pier 19, Mosquito Fleet Berth
Galveston, TX
This stretch of Galveston waterfront has carried nearly every current of Gulf history — Jean Lafitte's pirate ships, the Republic of Texas Navy, Confederate marine assaults that broke Federal occupation in 1863, and, so the story goes, Prohibition-era rum runners. In calmer years it became the berth of the Mosquito Fleet, small fishing boats named for their insect-like profiles. Their crews blended Asian and European fishing customs into a distinctly American trade, still honored in the yearly blessing of the fleet.
Galveston Quarantine Stations
Galveston, TX
As unregulated immigration through Galveston in the late 1830s fueled outbreaks of yellow fever, the young city built Texas's first quarantine station in 1853 on the island's eastern tip. Successive stations were repeatedly destroyed by hurricanes and rebuilt by city, state, and finally federal authorities, culminating in a ten-building federal facility completed on Pelican Island in 1915. Before it closed in 1950, the Pelican Island station inspected some 30,000 ships and screened an estimated 750,000 immigrants arriving in Texas.
SS Selma
Galveston, TX
Faced with wartime steel shortages, the United States gambled on an unusual idea during World War I: ships made of concrete. The largest was the SS Selma, built in Mobile, Alabama, and launched on June 28, 1919—the very day Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles. Too late for the war, she served briefly as a Gulf oil tanker until a jetty tore open her hull in 1920, and after failed repairs she was deliberately scuttled off Pelican Island in 1922, where her concrete skeleton still breaks the waters of Galveston Bay.
Galveston Island
Galveston, TX
Few places have packed so much Texas history onto one strip of sand as Galveston Island. Shipwrecked Spaniards met the Karankawa here in 1528, the pirate Jean Lafitte made it his headquarters, it served briefly as capital of the Republic in 1836, and it changed hands in the Civil War before the catastrophic hurricane of 1900 killed thousands and remade the city behind a great seawall.