Inside the Years-Long Fight to Keep Galveston Wild

In my five years living in Texas, I hadn’t yet been to Galveston. My colleagues and friends have written and spoken about the island in terms of unreality, a place where Texans have ritually flocked to escape the heat, or the law, or moral strictures. Perhaps the island’s human character has something to do with its natural character, which doesn’t lend itself easily to modern human settlement: The island lies in the path of tropical storms and hurricanes, becoming more powerful by the year. It’s marshy and made up mostly of unstable soils not ideal for houses, much less for gargantuan developments like the upcoming $700 million Margaritaville. And its average elevation is only seven feet above sea level, an average that will continue dropping…

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