Gravy

In “A Taste of Sicily on Galveston Bay,” Gravy producer Evan Stern takes listeners to Galveston, Texas. Once perhaps the greatest town of significance between New Orleans and San Francisco, today its population doesn’t even crack the top fifty of Texas cities. But while Austin is often referred to as a small town with growing pains, some say Galveston is really a big city disguised as a small town. Much of this is owed to its immigrant history, as its port provided a point of entry for over 750,000 newcomers from its opening in the 1830s, until the early 1920s.  Settled by a French pirate and officially incorporated in 1839, Galveston essentially sits on a sandbar that straddles its namesake bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The cotton trade gave rise to a prosperous, cosmopolitan center that enjoyed a trade monopoly as a gateway to Texas before the dredging of Houston’s safer, more accessible inland channel. Galveston briefly rivaled San Francisco as a destination for Gilded Age tycoons. And as a growing city in