People searching the wreckage for their belongings a few days after the 1900 Galveston hurricane in Texas. (Photo by Archive Photos/Getty Images)
Modern Times Lecture Series
The Great Storm of 1900: The Rise and Destruction of Nineteenth-Century Galveston
Dr. Andrew Torget
Sunday, October 6 | 2:30-4:00 PM CST
**Doors at 2:00; Lecture at 2:30
*IN PERSON TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT
UNFORTUNATELY WALK-UPS CANNOT BE ACCOMMODATED
We have reached our capacity for in person attendees. If you would like to register to attend online, please contact Paul Cato at pcato@nchmuseum.org
Tickets
$10 General Admission | $5 Student | $0 NCHM Member
Award-winning historian Andrew Torget will chart the improbable rise of Galveston from an abandoned sandbar in 1836 to its emergence as the most important port city in the American Southwest (and the third wealthiest city in the United States) by 1895. Then, in 1900, the most violent hurricane in American history destroyed Galveston, obliterating the city like a modern-day Atlantis and remaking both Texas and the American Southwest once more.
Torget will explore how the rise, destruction, and remaking of Galveston offer us an unparalleled window into the transformations reshaping Texas at the dawn of the twentieth century.
To attend online, register and receive the Zoom meeting link by email ahead of the lecture.
About the Speaker
Andrew J. Torget is a historian of nineteenth-century North America at the University of North Texas, where he holds the University Distinguished Teaching Professorship. An award-winning speaker, he has been featured at Harvard, Stanford, Rice, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and the Library of Congress. The author or editor of five books, his most recent, Seeds of Empire, won twelve book prizes and awards and was hailed by Texas Monthly as “the most nuanced and authoritative rewriting of Texas's origin myth to date.”
In 2018, he set a Guinness World Record for the World’s Longest History Lesson, which was seen online by more than 30 million people. The Dallas Morning News named him a finalist for their “Texan of the Year '' award in 2021 for the “uncommon, inspirational impact” of his work. In 2023, he served as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Germany, where he won the Berninghausen Prize for Outstanding Teaching at the University of Bremen.
