Galveston, oh Galveston

GALVESTON, Texas — Galveston has so many stories. It's hard to see how they all could have happened on this 35-mile-long, 2-mile-wide Texas island.

Galveston's first town was founded by a pirate, the infamous Jean Lafitte. Until planners opened the Houston Ship Channel in the early 20th century, the city was one of the country's busiest ports.

It was a swinging party town where the famous and not-so-famous came for hooch and illegal gambling at the Balinese Room, built on a dock over the water so that, when the Texas Rangers arrived for a raid, the band could strike up "The Eyes of Texas" as a warning and all evidence of gambling quietly disappeared, tumbled into the surf, stashed in ovens or folded into walls, Murphy bed-style.

And Galveston is the site of the Great Storm, a 1900 terror that killed more than 6,000 people and devastated the island. There are several monuments in memory of that storm, still the country's most deadly natural disaster, and a film devoted to telling the many stories arising from its passage across the island.

But, of course, the great one is not the only storm Galveston has seen. More than a century later, in 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall on Galveston Island and the nearby Bolivar Peninsula. A 15-foot storm surge flooded the island, carrying away homes and boats and transporting tons of beach sand inland, while hurricane winds peeled back roofs, shattered signs and shut down basic services.

But these are only chapters in the real story of Galveston. It's the story of a community continually on the move, flourishing when times are good and adapting when times are tough, rising out of the rubble of storms and economic devastation to become a popular getaway and a unique place in Texas.

Galveston attracts plenty of day and weekend visitors from east Texas, who come for its warm coastal waters, long, shallow beaches and an island full of diversions ranging from water parks to historic homes.

But before any of that, there are the beaches. These aren't the palm-dappled, white-sand beauties beloved of travel magazines and postcard makers. The sand is, well, sand-colored, and aside from the groomed and manicured trees growing near the resort hotels on Seawall Boulevard, there's not a palm in sight.

But there are blue skies, warm waters, sea breezes and 32 miles of sand on which to park your beach umbrella. Besides that, the beaches are particularly child-friendly, with a shallow slope that allows smaller kids to enjoy waves and bigger kids to enjoy boogie boarding while still touching the bottom.