The Richmond palladium. (Richmond, Ind.) 1906-1907, 1906-11-12
CITY THAT HAD SAND"
Row Galveston Is Still Raising Itself
Above Flood Line.

Each day the solid wall crept farther
along the gulf front until at length it
stretched four and half miles. guard
ing the whole corporate length TO its
outer limits, and on top of this the
city has undertaken a task unknown in
| history, but which is now one third
compIeted--to lift itself bodily above
the flood line. Il district as large as all
that part of Manhattan below Houston
street is being raised to q height in
places fifteen feet above it's present
level. 1t was not an open country or
tract of waste land which was to be
lifted. 1t was the major part of an
active, vigorous town. the most impor-
tant business center of the southwest.
Street car lines, gas pipes, water
mains, houses, churches. all the COM
pick mechanism Of a metropolis, had to
be elevated an average of seven feet
above the old grade. No less than H.
100000 cubic Yards are needed to COM
plete this work.
Eleven million cubic yards! The
quantity conveys no definite idea to
most. What it really meant for the
gulf city to undertake this work may
be realized from, comparisons. Calves
ton is the second export city Of the
United States. During the last fiscal
year, 1905. there cleared here for both
United = and foreign ports vessels
of a tot 1,762.47S net registered
tons. This tonnage is an equivalent of
1,S2S000 cubic yards
If every vessel clearing from the port
~ol- To-,
with sand to her full net tonnage ca
pacity the amount carried away would
be less than one-sixth Of what is being
used in raising the grade. The material
required would make five pyramids as
large as that of Cheops If every
vessel flying the American flag were
required to bring one full cargo OF
sand 1t would take three trips of this
great fleet to meet Galveston's need
This is the magnitude of the public
work that the city of less than 10000
souls has undertaken with no outside
aid save the retention of its own state
taxes for seventeen years.
The men of Galveston have built a
solid concrete sea wall four and a half
miles long at cost of S1,500.OO0 and
have paid for it in cash. They have
backed the wall up with a hundred
feet Of solid filling and are now raising
the greater portion Of the city to an
average height of fourteen and half
feet above sea level at cost of So
100000 further
The solution of the problem of rails
ing Galveston was an engineering feat.
No tool in America could accomplish
~
and hauling material by rail cost $780,
COO more than the municipal tax limit
would allow. Suction dredges could not
pump sand three miles into the heart
of the town. The solution lay in the
radical proposal Of driving canal into
the heart of the city and using self
propelled dredges, but recently intro
duced in Europe, which could take
their loads from the ship channel,
steam up this canal and discharge the
material under the houses and through
the streets.
The operation of these engineering
Titans possesses certain interest.
They steam over or alongside a sand
bank The main engines actuate a
large centrifugal pump. whose function
it is to take up material and discharge
it into the hoppers- s'kreiseI ponpe"
or whirlpool pump, was the name given
it by the old Prussian pioneer who first
applied this principle to hydraulic
dredging. The pump forms a small
sucking up into the interior
of the dredge sand. mud, etc. with so
TO 90 per cent of sea water Then with
a full load of hundreds of tons the
dredge steams across the navigable /
channel, up the temporary canal and
pipes the mixture on to the lots and
appointed streets.
Two years more viii see the accom- |
plishment OF this great undertaking. |
The sea wall will withstand the fury |
Of the widest storms The raising of /
its grade will lift the city above the /
danger point Of the highest food. The /
incubus which has for so long over /
shadowed this entrepot of the SOUTH i
west will vanish GaIveSron-s legiti- 1
mate future viii have TO its realization /
no vital barner.-Scientific American Il