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TIKI ISLAND REAL ESTATE

Tiki Island/Galveston Island

Houston-area homebuyers craving an island lifestyle can look to two unique Gulf Coast communities. Tiki Island is a tiny peninsula of resort homes, where sport fishing is the main attraction. Galveston Island, with its legendary history as pirate kingdom, is a thriving seaport with miles of lovely beachfront and many stately homes.

Tiki Island

According to the island's Civic Association, "this is the place where you can live year round and feel like you're on vacation." Indeed, Tiki Island started as a weekend and retirement community in the late 1960s, but has grown into a residential area of 850 homes, where families also live permanently. The small village - it is 1.4 square miles - was incorporated in 1982 and has a population of approximately 1,200.

Tiki Island is located off Interstate 45 on a peninsula in Jones Bay, five miles west of Galveston. The village has a mayor and an alderman form of government, plus a police department, volunteer fire department, and one church.

Galveston

Galveston Island is a premier second-home location, with new developments emerging up and down the island along the bay and the Gulf. Homes range widely in style and price and include high-rise condominiums, townhomes, reproduction seaside cottages, canal homes, and gated luxury homes. Galveston is renowned for its restored Victorian houses, many in the downtown neighborhood "The Strand," and for its ten-mile-long seawall designed to protect the city from hurricane storm surge.

Galveston real estate (population, 58,000) is accessible by a causeway linking Galveston Island to the mainland on the north end of the city, by a toll bridge on the western end of the island, and by ferry service.

History is still one of the island's main draws. After being tossed out of Louisiana in the early 1800s, the infamous pirate Jean Lafitte decamped to Galveston Island and preyed upon the Gulf's rich shipping lanes. According to legend, he amassed a stash of treasure that remains hidden somewhere near the island. By the end of 19^th century, Galveston was a thriving port for the cotton trade, but it slid into genteel decline when Houston became the Gulf's primary port. Oilman George Mitchell spearheaded Galveston's renaissance in the 1980s, and today the island's historic downtown, Mardi Gras festival, and abundant beaches make it a major tourist destination.