Explore Galveston’s Historical Sites

Who doesn’t love the beach? Galveston is a great place to take in some sun and waves! Whether you’re on a week long family vacation, weekend getaway, or making your way to a cruise, take some time to explore Galveston’s historical sites.  My visit to Galveston, Texas was sponsored as a part of a familiarization trip with Texas Travel Talk and Galveston City Visitors Bureau. All opinions are my own.

Galveston Homeschool Curriculum

Galveston isn’t just a beach town. It is swimming in Texas history! Galveston.com has made it easy for homeschoolers or anyone wanting to take delve a little deeper and make their trip more meaningful with a fantastic homeschool curriculum! Using the curriculum you can make it as extensive or as simple as you’d like to fit your own educational goals. Pick and choose sites you want to explore and select how you want to enrich your visit. There are a plethora of ideas to get students thinking in advance of visits, activity sheets to fill in as you go or after visiting a site, quizzes, and so many more ideas.

Our family had the opportunity to test drive the curriculum before it was published. We had a blast! With kids ages ranging from 6-16 we loved the flexibility. The older kids and I read up on the sites we would visit ahead of time, giving us background and more understanding of the sites we would see. I loved having thinking questions to ask my younger kids and information to help explain what they were seeing. We weren’t able to see everything on our trip and definitely want to get back and explore more, but here are a some sites we loved learning about:

Five Historical Sites to Visit in Galveston:

• The Grand 1894 Opera House

Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, The Grand is one of the few theaters left in Texas from the 1880s. In 1993 the 73rd Texas Legislature proclaimed The Grand “The Official Opera House of Texas!”

Six years after it was built, the hurricane of 1900 rolled into Galveston, greatly damaging the building, but the Opera House was quickly rebuilt.

More recently The Grand was restored 1974, and is still open today showing Broadway musicals, stars of stage and screen, comedy, drama and other performances year-round.

How I love the beauty of architecture from the 18 and early 19 hundreds. I walked around in awe. It’s definitely worth a tour, but better yet, get tickets to a show. I’d love to go back and see a show here!

• Ocean Star Offshore Drilling Rig & Museum

Enjoy a small gift shop as you wait to board the drilling rig and take the time to look out into the water. We saw lots of dolphins playing! It’s also fun to see the cruise ships just down the pier.

Take advantage of this rare opportunity to walk aboard a real refurbished offshore drilling rig! You will expound your knowledge of energy and science as you see first hand offshore drilling equipment, hands on exhibits, and videos on this three level rig and museum.

• Texas Seaport Museum/Tall Ship Elissa

We enjoyed the Texas Seaport Museum and accompanying gift shop. There are some great exhibits and fun activities for the kids, but for us, climbing aboard the Tall Ship Elissa was the highlight.

The 1877 Tall Ship ELISSA is the official tall ship of Texas! In  it contains a two-story museum of maritime history. It also has a database of 133,000 immigrants who entered the United States through the port of Galveston.

Reading the stories of real people and walking through the refurbished ship brought history alive!

• Rosenberg Library

The oldest public library in Texas still in operation today! We loved this so much I wrote a full article just on the library! See my full review here>>> Rosenberg Library

• The Bryan Museum

The Bryan Museum is located in the historic Galveston Orphans Home. In it lives The Bryan Collection, one of the world’s largest collections of historical artifacts, documents, and artwork relating to Texas and the American West!

Beyond the historical documents and collections inside the building itself alone is a beautiful Renaissance Revival-style building that was once the Galveston Orphans Home.

We loved the models of battles such as this one of The Battle of San Jacinto. Assembled by J.P. and Mary Jon Bryan, the vast collection has approximately 70,000 items in total.

The downstairs area is a kid’s dreamland to explore with pirate treasure, neon lights, and games to enjoy. Our crew had a blast at the Bryan Museum!

We absolutely loved learning our way across Galveston. To learn more about these sites and study other Galveston Historical Sites click over to their Homeschool Curriculum!