
Gust Feist Postcard
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.....Following the 1900 Storm, Galveston leaders decided to build a seawall and raise the entire city up to prevent another disaster in the future. Virtually every house was put on stilts and dredge material filled in underneath. A company called Goldhart & Bates was contracted to do the dredge work at a rate of 18 1/2 cents per cubic yard. Gas lines, water lines, streetcar tracks, all had to be raised up in a massive effort. At the seawall, buildings were raised 17 feet whilst at Broadway the fill sloped to 10 feet.
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.....This was a huge task that involved creating a systems of canals, pipelines, dredges and barges to bring in material to fill in the area to be raised. |
.....The project ended up taking six years. 16,321,400 cubic yards of dredged sand from the Gulf was used to raise the island. Islanders got used to walking along a system of planks and trestles over the draining sands.
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.....Children actually enjoyed playing in front of the pipes spewing dredge silt!
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..... To get the dredge material into the city, a canal 3.5 miles long, 200 feet wide, and 18 feet deep was excavated through the city. The sand was sucked from the bottom of Galveston Bay, transported to pipe-line discharge stations along the canal, and then dispersed via a system of pipes and discharges. A total of five dredges were used.
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Dredge Boat Holm, Working in the Grade Raising Canal, Galveston.
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End of Discharge Pipe Grade Raising at Galveston, Texas, Trube Photo

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