

This photograph shows the aftermath of the hurricane and the destruction it wrought.Ī quarter of a century earlier, the nearby town of Indianola on Matagorda Bay was undergoing its own boom and was second to Galveston among Texas ports. With this prosperity came a sense of complacency. Its position on the natural harbour of Galveston Bay along the Gulf of Mexico made it the centre of trade and the biggest city in the state of Texas. The city of Galveston at the end of the 19th century was a booming metropolis with a population of 42,000. It is often locally known in the Galveston area as The Great Storm or The 1900 Storm. Common names for the storm include the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the Great Galveston Hurricane, and in older documentation, the Galveston Flood. The hurricane has no official name and is referred to under various descriptive, unofficial names. By contrast, the second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, caused approximately 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, has caused approximately 1,600 deaths. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is to date the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. The number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of casualties of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780, and 1998's Hurricane Mitch.


The death toll has been estimated to be between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals, depending on whether one counts casualties from the city of Galveston itself, the larger island, or the region as a whole. It had estimated winds of 135 miles per hour (215 km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on the city of Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900. Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, south Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas (particularly around Galveston), much of the Central United States, Great Lakes region, Atlantic Canada
