Texas City Memorial

29th Street at Loop 197, Texas City, Texas
Coordinates: 29.408144, -94.938562
From I-45, take the Emmett F Lowry Expressway all the way to Highway 146 at Texas City and turn left (north). Go about a mile and turn right (east) onto Loop 197 (25th Avenue North), then about another mile to the park on the left (north) side of the road, just before 29th Street.

The remains of the 63 unidentified victims of the 1947 Texas City Disaster are buried in this park, which also contains an anchor from the SS Grandcamp, one of the three ships that exploded on that terrible day (the High Flyer and the Wilson B Keene also exploded). There is a memorial for the volunteer firemen who died while trying to bring the blaze under control, a memorial for the crew of the Grandcamp and a list of the known victims. There are also memorials for the local military men and women who have died in the line of duty. It's a very nice place.

I have a list of the known dead - reported missing. The missing folks were not all added to the death records so this list could be important.

The victims buried here might be crewmen from the ships, workers from the plants, bystanders who came to watch the fire or anyone else who was within a large radius of the initial explosion. I want to add that there was also a very large number of people who disappeared on that day and were never found.

From AtlasObscura
"The fires burned for weeks, the damage was overwhelming - 500 homes destroyed, 5,000 injured, 2,000 homeless, 405 identified bodies, 63 never identified, and untold numbers unrecovered. The official death toll was 581, but it’s thought to be much higher than that."

There are actually several parks around the city that memorialize the devastation caused by this event.

There are many, many websites that contain information on the Disaster, just Google it. The Facebook page has photos of the various plaques and statues.
Postcard of Texas City Disaster
Thank you to Carol Gibbs for the postcards, which she received from a friend in Texas City.
I've included the others on the TXGenWeb Postcards site for Texas City.
This startling image cannot convey the extent of the damage to Galveston County, even when
you consider that it was photographed at an altitude that allowed this photo to encompass a
HUGE area - at least 5 or 6 city blocks square for this small part of the inferno.