History of Houston

The city of Houston in the U.S. state of Texas was founded in 1837 after Augustus and John Allen had acquired land to establish a new town at the junction of Buffalo and White Oak bayous in 1836.

The region known as Houston is located on land that was once home of the Karankawa (kə rang′kə wä′,-wô′,-wə) and the Atakapa (əˈtɑːkəpə) indigenous peoples for at least 2,000 years before the first known settlers arrived.

[5] Gail Borden and his assistant Moses Lapham conducted preliminary surveying work in October, taking field notes and laying stakes.

[6] Meanwhile, John Allen was back in Columbia lobbying members of Texas Congress to designate the not yet surveyed town and promising to construct government buildings.

[8] The Laura, the first steamship ever to visit Houston, arrived in January 1837, at which time the town totaled twelve residents and one log cabin.

Captain Edward Auld piloted the large, deep-draft steamer to the wharf at the foot of Main Street, and earned $1,000 for performing this task.

[17] In the early statehood era, historian Harold Platt notes the emergence of "commercial-civic elites," a term borrowed from Blaine A. Brownell.

House married Shearn's daughter while transitioning from his bakery into a cotton mercantile store, and later moving into the banking and real estate businesses.

Houston's total population grew to 4,428 by 1860, and its footprint expanded to the southwest by several blocks, reaching to a part of current-day Hadley Street.

[22] Urban bondsmen performed manual labor, such as construction, or moving freight at the wharf or to and from the warehouses; others worked as servants at private homes and hotels, or as cooks and waiters.

However, the first railroad to operate in Texas was the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway, which terminated at Harrisburg, Houston's rival to the east.

[26] The H&TC progressed beyond Cypress, laying track through Hempstead and Navasota, and reached Millican on the eve of the Civil War.

The next year Houston provided railroad access to Galveston when the Island City finished the long viaduct across the back bay.

Texas businessmen joined to expand the railroad network, which contributed to Houston's primacy in the state and the development of Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and El Paso.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Texas passed a new constitution and laws that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans by making voter registration and voting more complicated and subject to white administration.

The Mechanical and Blood Stock Association of Texas convened the first and second state fairs on a temporary site north of Buffalo Bayou.

HCSC developed service in the business district, then centered on Congress Avenue and Main Street, though one the first four lines extended as fair south as the Fairgrounds.

These companies included metal working facilities, such as blacksmith shops, iron foundries, and wheelwrights; woodworkers, such as cabinet makers and millworks; and many publishers and printers.

The city mobilized to convey fresh water, food, medical supplies, and clothing to Galveston via steamboat and repaired damaged railroads in order to reestablish service to the island.

A year later, wildcatters were digging wells at Spindletop as Houston emerged as a regional petroleum center, the home base of many new oil companies.

The Rusk Settlement House and El Campo Laurel lodge were two Second Ward organizations serving the emerging Mexican community in Houston.

[46] In early 1917 the U.S. War Department ordered two military installations to be built in Harris County: Camp Logan and Ellington Field.

[51] Jesse H. Jones led a group of local bankers in 1931 to pool their resources in order to save the weaker banks.

Federal funding from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Works Progress Administration facilitated major construction projects in the mid-1930s, including assistance for a new Houston City Hall and Lamar High School.

Houston International Airport expanded commercial and passenger facilities during the 1930s, while Braniff, Eastern, and Southern airlines all offered regular service by 1941.

This was 16 years after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which determined that segregated schools were inherently unequal.

[citation needed] Tropical Storm Allison devastated many neighborhoods as well as interrupted all services within the Texas medical center for several months with flooding in June 2001.

At least 17 people were killed around the Houston area when the rainfall from Allison that fell on June 8 and 9 caused the city's bayous to rise over their banks.

In 2004, the Mayor of the city was Bill White and Houston unveiled the first Mahatma Gandhi statue in the state of Texas at Hermann Park.

Memorial Day storms in 2015 brought flash flooding to the city as some areas received 11 inches or more of rain overnight, exacerbated by already full bayous.