Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Kemah, TX

Kemah is a small city on the western shore of Galveston Bay in Galveston County, on State Highway 146 about 25 miles northwest of Galveston, and it sits only about 7 feet above sea level.

Kemah's nickname is the 'Gateway to the Bay.'

The land under Kemah was granted in 1824 to Michael Gouldrich, one of Stephen F. Austin's 'Old Three Hundred' colonists.

The town was laid out in 1898 along the Texas and New Orleans Railroad and first called Evergreen; it was also known as Shell Siding for the oyster-shell middens along the bay, in places 20 to 30 feet deep.

When the post office opened in 1907, the town was renamed Kemah - a Karankawa word meaning 'facing the winds' - because another Texas town already used the name Evergreen.

Kemah began as a shrimping and fishing town, and it still celebrates that heritage with an annual Blessing of the Fleet each August.

From the 1920s through the 1950s, Kemah's waterfront was part of the Maceo family's Galveston vice empire, with casinos such as the Chili Bowl and the Kemah Den operating until the illegal gambling era was shut down in the 1950s.

Kemah became a general-law city in 1966.

The 60-acre Kemah Boardwalk, opened by Landry's in the late 1990s, turned the little bay town into a major tourist draw and is its largest employer; Kemah was ranked the top tourism spot in the Greater Houston area in 2012.

Hurricane Ike's storm surge slammed the Kemah Boardwalk when the storm made landfall on September 13, 2008, though the attraction was quickly rebuilt.