Past Reflections of a Watershed

Alecya Gallaway with Kemah Historical Society board member and President Ed Linck

A pictorial history of Clear Lake and Clear Creek presented by Alecya Galaway, 4-24-'05. This is an abbreviated report on that presentation concentrating on the towns on the coast of Galveston Bay surrounding Clear Creek. The program was provided by the Environmental Institute of Houston, University of Houston Clear Lake. The photos were taken with a 3 megapixel Olympus camera of a slide projector so there is some distortion and the pictures are sometimes a bit fuzzy.  The subject matter is worth it, though.  Page 1 of 3 pages

Click on any picture to enlarge.

Early map of Seabrook Showing the offset of Clear Creek as it reaches Galveston Bay on the right. The Midden was a huge pile of shell 30ft or more high built up over the centuries that protected the shore from storm surge. This was later removed for railroad berms from 1850 to 1900.

This is an aerial view of the Midden site showing the change between 1959 and 1993. Notice that you can still see the original channel of Clear Creek in the earlier photograph.

 Early land survey.

Early settler on the South shore of Clear Lake

Boat builders in Kemah from 1850 to 1900.

1854 map

Early map of the area railroads.

Early Seabrook structure

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