Ike High Water Mark at 1725 Avenue M - Galveston, TX - High Level Marks on Waymarking.com

A Texas Historical Marker in the yard tells:

John Maxwell Jones, a native of Delaware, came to Galveston in 1839 and opened a jewelry store on The Strand. Active in area commerce, he helped organize the First National Bank of Galveston. His wife Henrietta was the daughter of French composer Jacques Offenbach. This Greek revival house served as their home prior to 1867. It was later owned by banker Henry Rosenberg, businessman Joe Levy, and County Judge E. B. Holman.

I normally would not cite Wiki, but the following article is an excellent account of Hurrican Ike:

In Galveston, by 4 p.m. CDT (2100 UTC) on September 12, the rising storm surge began overtopping the 17-ft (5.2 m) Galveston Seawall, which faces the Gulf of Mexico;waves had been crashing along the seawall earlier, from 9 a.m. CDT. Although Seawall Boulevard is elevated above the shoreline, many areas of town slope down behind the seawall to the lower elevation of Galveston Island.

The historic Balinese Room, a former mafia-run nightclub on a pier that had extended 600 feet into the Gulf of Mexico and had withstood many serious storms, was swept away as Ike's eye crossed over the eastern half of Galveston Island. The elevated structure,a pier, which had hosted performers ranging from Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and George Burns to Groucho Marx and Sammy Davis, Jr., had recently been renovated and returned to profitability after years of neglect and disrepair, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

None of the many wooden piers that gave Galveston much of its unique character survived the landfall of Hurricane Ike. In addition to the Balinese Room, Murdoch's, Hooters[40] and the 61st Street Pier were all completely destroyed. Murdoch's Pier was rebuilt and reopened in October 2009, while Hooters Galveston (housed in the former Ocean Grill building) was not rebuilt; the site remains vacant as of 2011. (A new Hooters was reopened in November 2017 off 61st Street south of Interstate 45.) The 61st Street Pier was rebuilt and reopened in 2010. Seawall Boulevard, which runs the entire length of the seawall several meters above the popular beaches adjoining the Gulf, was littered with the debris of these and other structures.

The landmark Flagship Hotel, which sat on deep concrete pylons, was seriously damaged, but no one was injured, and while an early survey indicated the structure would be salvageable; however that proved to be untrue, and the hotel was demolished in 2011. Some of the hotel's siding was peeled off by the storm (this occurred during Hurricane Alicia in 1983), venting at least one top-floor guest suite to the open air, and the elevated ramp permitting vehicles to access the hotel's lower level from Seawall Boulevard fell into the Gulf.

The seemingly protected back side of the island also suffered heavy damage to tourist areas. The Lone Star Flight Museum suffered massive damage as the storm surge washed over the airport and though all the aircraft hangars (not just the museums) with about 8 feet of water. All the airplanes, except those that flew out before the storm, were damaged from moderate to severe, but the worst was the complete destruction of the "Aviation Hall of Fame" with numerous personal items of aviation's greatest pioneers. Conversely, Moody Gardens was built with hurricane storms in mind with strong pyramid shaped structures very high above sea level, so it was able to withstand the worst of the storm and return to operation quickly.

The Galveston Railroad Museum suffered damage throughout its museum and exhibit grounds. Several railcars and locomotives are damaged by the hurricane's winds and flooding# 2 historical EMD F7 locomotives are scrapped after severely affected. The museum's model railroad layout was also destroyed.

Even though there were advance evacuation plans, Mary Jo Naschke, spokesperson for the city of Galveston, estimated that (as of Friday morning) a quarter of the city's residents disregarded calls for them to evacuate, despite predictions that most of Galveston Island would suffer heavy flooding storm tide. By 6 p.m. Friday night, estimates varied as to how many of the 58,000 residents remained, but the figures of remaining residents were in the thousands.

Some people survived by punching holes in attics and carried sick relatives away from the flood. On the 91st Street Pier, formerly a two-story structure resembling a house that extended some 400 feet (120 m) into the Gulf, three persons opted to ride the storm out, despite a National Weather Service warning direly predicting that they faced "certain death" from what was expected to be up to a 24-foot storm surge. Calling local emergency operators three hours ahead of Ike's landfall, they requested evacuation by Coast Guard personnel, as the entire length of the pier and the structure's first story had by that time fallen into the Gulf. They were informed that no one could rescue them at that time, due to the unacceptable risks their prospective rescuers would be subjected to. Weathering the storm huddled inside what remained of the pier's second floor, they were lifted to safety by a rescue helicopter late the following morning.

An early survey of Galveston Island, performed late Saturday, September 13 and Sunday, September 14, 2008, indicated that the entirety of the Island west of 11 Mile Road was entirely devastated, and that few structures on Galveston's western one-third had survived. This area of near-total destruction includes the communities of Bayou Vista and Jamaica Beach, as well as the Galveston Country Club and the Galveston Island State Park. The affected area previously included some 1,000 structures, including single-family dwellings, commercial enterprises, and hotels and resorts. It is unknown how many residents may have ignored repeated calls to evacuate, or what became of those who decided to remain in Galveston's vulnerable West End.

Electric power failed in Galveston around 7:45 p.m. CDT. Widespread flooding included downtown Galveston: such as 6-ft (2 m) deep inside the Galveston County Courthouse, and the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston was flooded. Five people have died on Galveston Island - two of them drowned and three of them were due to natural causes.

In transferring survivors out of town, Galveston officials used Ball High School, which was used as a "shelter of last resort" for evacuees, to be a center for FEMA. More than 200 residents stayed at the school shelter, and hundreds more ate meals there. Buses were brought in on Sunday to take residents from that shelter, and others who wanted to leave the island, to a shelter in San Antonio.

On the day of landfall, police were stopping travelers at La Marque, 4 miles (6 km) north of Galveston, and making them exit the highway. Interstate 45 at La Marque had been closed because boats and parts of wrecked piers were strewn throughout floodwaters blocking the road.

Chris Terrill filmed the impact of Ike on Galveston, in the second part of his three-part series Nature's Fury. The film captured the evacuation, storm surge and 17-foot (5.2 m) waves overtopping the sea wall preceding the hurricane's arrival; before and after footage of the historic Balinese Room nightclub that was destroyed in the storm; scenes on the street during 100 mph winds and lashing rain; and the devastation afterwards.

From a historical perspective, on September 8, 1900, the Great Galveston Hurricane came ashore on a path similar to Ike, bringing with it a storm surge that inundated most of Galveston Island: as a result, much of the city was destroyed and at least 6,000 people were killed in a few hours; afterward, the level of the island was raised an average of 4 ft (1.3 m), adding a high seawall (17-ft, 5.2 m) to block incoming waves.

Natural or man made event?: Natural What type of marker?: Plaque When did this occur?: September 13, 2008 Website related to the event..: [Web Link]

Visit Instructions:
A picture showing the level along with any markers telling of what had occurred can be used. Better yet would be a picture of you or someone standing next to the high level mark, that would show if you would have been just wading or completely submersed.

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.