Sam's Town - History of Houston, Texas

In the spring of 1837, one visitor to a new town on Buffalo Bayou found what he saw particularly impressive: "Upwards of 100 houses finished, and going up rapidly (some of them fine frame buildings) and 1500 people, all actively engaged in their respective pursuits."

Only three months earlier, he continued, "a small log cabin & 12 persons were all that distinguished it from the adjacent forests...."

As President of the newly-created Republic of Texas, the author of those observations--Sam Houston--would do all he could to support the growth of the new town. After all, it had been named in his honor.

When the Republic's first president visited Buffalo Bayou that April, Houston, Texas was less than a year old. Its birth as an investment by two New Yorkers, John K. and Augustus C. Allen, had been noted in Texas' newspaper of record, the Telegraph and Texas Register on Aug. 30, 1836: "From all we can learn, the [location] they have selected possesses as many advantages as any other interior town in Texas...on account of the easy access to Galveston and the facility in procuring timber."

An advertisement paid for by the Allens in the same edition of the newspaper predicted that "when the rich lands of this country shall be settled, a trade will flow to it, making it, beyond all doubt, the great interior commercial emporium of Texas." In this case, there was truth in advertising. At the beginning of the 21^st century, Houston is one of the great commercial emporiums of Texas-and the world.

Not only is Houston the largest city in Texas, it is fourth-largest nationally behind New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. In Texas, it is virtually a city-state with a metropolitan population larger than some states.

It all started when the Allen brothers paid $5000 for a 6,642-acre town site on the west bank of Buffalo Bayou, a winding stream navigable to Trinity Bay and on to Galveston, then Texas' most important port. For two years, from 1837 to 1839, Houston was capital of the young Republic. But after the election of Mirabeau B. Lamar as Sam Houston's successor, the seat of government was moved to Austin.

Though it lost its role as a government center, Houston's geography could not be changed by political whim. Though Houston was 50 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico, a cotton grower could move his crop by water from the fertile Brazos River valley to the marketplace of the world. Beginning in 1853, Houston developed as the railroad center of ante-bellum Texas. By the outbreak of the Civil War, five railroads converged on the city. None of the lines extended beyond the borders of the state, but Houston was connected with Galveston and its port. Houston's place as a transportation center was assured.

The development of the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont in 1901 began a growth surge that continued in Houston for most of the rest of the century. When Army engineers dredged the bayou to accommodate sea-faring vessels in 1914, the Bayou City soon eclipsed Galveston as a port and as a city. Today Houston is the third busiest port in America. The city's population doubled every 20 years from 1900 to 1980.

As oil became more and more vital to the American economy, the ship channel was lined with refineries. An industry originally based on the conversion of crude oil into gasoline evolved into one of the world's largest petrochemical complexes with plants producing everything from fertilizer to plastics.

Though Houston boomed on what came from deep in the earth, mankind was beginning to look toward the moon and beyond. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced in Houston that the United States would land a manned spacecraft on the moon before the end of the decade. Houston was selected as headquarters for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Manned Spacecraft Center. When Apollo 11 landed on the lunar surface on July 17, 1969, the first word radioed back to earth was "Houston."

As America began the exploration of a new frontier in space, Houston-a city known in its formative years for deadly outbreaks of Yellow Fever--also was at the forefront of medical research and treatment. The Texas Medical Center, founded in 1943, had grown into a complex of more than 40 medical institutions specializing in an array of fields from cancer treatment to heart transplantation.

At the beginning of the 20^th century, the population of Houston had been 45,000. A century later, Houston had become a world-class city with more than 2 million residents.