Two sides of a shrimp island
Galveston is a barrier island about 50 miles south of Houston. Visit Galveston calls it the birthplace of Juneteenth and points out that in the 1880s it was the second largest immigration port in the country. Today more than eight million people come to the island every year, and a good share of them come hungry for Gulf shrimp eaten within sight of salt water.
The working side faces the harbor, not the beach. Pier 19, near the corner of 20th Street and Wharf Road, has been home to Galveston's commercial fishing fleet for more than 150 years and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Shrimp boats share the slips with charter and party boats. A few doors from Katie's Seafood House, Katie's Seafood Market lays the local catch out on ice and will pack your order for the drive home, while brown pelicans wait by the back doors for scraps.
The Seawall side has its own landmark. San Giacinto Gaido, an Italian immigrant everyone called Cinto, opened a sandwich shop at Seawall and 23rd Street in 1911. His Texas Historical Commission marker says that by 1920 it was the first seafront restaurant on the island open all year. The family moved to the Seawall and 39th Street site, first built as a drive-in, in 1936, and in 1962 Gaido's was one of the first Galveston restaurants to integrate.
The fourth generation of Gaidos runs the place now. According to Visit Galveston, the kitchen still peels Gulf shrimp, shucks Galveston Bay oysters and fillets fish by hand, and regulars still save room for the pecan pie.
Why Galveston shrimp have a calendar
Texas shuts its Gulf waters to shrimp trawling each spring, from 30 minutes after sunset on May 15 to 30 minutes after sunset on July 15. NOAA Fisheries closes the federal waters off Texas at the same moment. The pause gives young brown shrimp time to grow to a larger, more valuable size, and Texas Parks and Wildlife sampling sets its length, between 45 and 60 days.
Galveston Bay keeps its own schedule. Under the state's rules, the major bays open to commercial shrimping by day from May 15 to July 15 and again from August 15 to November 30. So the Gulf boats go back to work in mid July, the bay reopens in mid August, and by the time the Shrimp Festival fills the Strand in late September both are fishing.
