Picture the concrete rising here after the deadly 1900 hurricane, a barrier built to hold back future storms. Construction began in September 1902, and the initial segment was completed on July 29, 1904. Between 1904 and 1963 the seawall was extended from 3.3 miles to over 10 miles.
It performed as intended, and the Corps of Engineers later estimated that $100 million in damage was avoided in the aftermath of the 1983 Hurricane Alicia. But the seawall also brought an unintended consequence: passive erosion that gradually disappeared the once-wide beach and the resort business with it. Within twenty years, the city had lost one hundred yards of sand.
People who once watched auto racing on a wide beach were left with a narrow strip of sand at low tide and a gloomy vista of waves on rocks when the tide was high. Houston soon overtook Galveston as the major city in the region. On September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike's large waves over-topped the seawall and a commission was established by the Texas governor to investigate preparing for and mitigating future...
Notice the narrow strip of sand at low tide, all that's left after the seawall's erosion took a hundred yards of beach.