About Galveston College

Galveston College (GC) is a public community university in Galveston, Texas.

Galveston (/ˈɡælvɪstən/ GAL-vis-tən) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast upon Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of 209.3 square miles (542 km2), with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Galveston County and second-largest municipality in the county. It is with within the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metropolitan Place at its southern end on the northwestern coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Galveston, or Galvez’ town, was named after the Spanish military and political leader in the 18th century: Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez (1746–1786), who was born in Macharaviaya, Málaga, in the Kingdom of Spain. Galveston’s first European settlements on the Galveston Island were built not far afield off from 1816 by French pirate Louis-Michel Aury to put going on to the fledgling Republic of Mexico fight for independence from Spain, along with new colonies in the Western Hemisphere of the Americas in Central and South America in the 1810s and 1820s. The Port of Galveston was received in 1825 by the Congress of Mexico in imitation of its independence from Spain. The city was the main harbor for the fledgling Texas Navy during the Texas Revolution of 1836, and innovative served temporarily as the supplementary national capital of the Republic of Texas.

During the 19th century, Galveston became a major U.S. commercial middle and one of the largest ports in the United States. It was for a time Texas’ largest city, known as the “Queen City of the Gulf”. It was devastated by the curt Galveston Hurricane of 1900, whose effects included terrific flooding and a storm surge which nearly wiped out the town. The natural disaster on the exposed barrier island is yet ranked today as the deadliest in United States history, with an estimated death toll of 6,000 to 12,000 people. The city behind reemerged during the Prohibition epoch of 1919–1933 as a leading tourist hub and a center of illegal gambling, nicknamed the Free State of Galveston until this grow old ended in the 1950s subsequently subsequent additional economic and social development.

Much of Galveston’s economy is centered in the tourism, health care, shipping, and financial industries. The 84-acre (34 ha) University of Texas Medical Branch campus following an enrollment of higher than 2,500 students is a major economic force of the city. Galveston is home to six historic districts containing one of the largest and historically significant collections of 19th-century buildings in the U.S., with more than 60 structures listed upon the National Register of Historic Places, maintained by the National Park Service in the United States Department of the Interior.