"Despite its appeal as a natural harbor, Galveston, Texas, is located on a small Gulf Coast barrier island that makes it ill-suited for dense urban development. Nonetheless, early American and European settlers envisioned the site as a place with tremendous economic potential, appropriate for urban expansion. In Mythic Galveston: Reinventing America's Third Coast, Susan Wiley Hardwick examines Galveston's rapid rise and the myth created by immigrants and boosters of an abundant island with a highly temperate, even tropical, climate, ideal for settlement. Hardwick's historical analysis focuses on immigrant settlement patterns and the important contributions to Galveston's evolving sense of place made by diverse ethnic and racial groups."--BOOK JACKET.