Three duck hunters in 1891 noted that a location along Galveston Bay, known locally as Shoal Point, had the potential to become a major port.

After they returned to Duluth, they formed the Myers Brothers syndicate, convinced other investors to put up money to buy 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) of Galveston Bay frontage, including Shoal Point.

By 1893, the investors had formed the Texas City Improvement Company (TCIC), which plotted and filed the townsite plan.

A post office opened in 1893 with Frank B. Davison appointed as the town's first postmaster, to serve about 250 people who had moved there from Minnesota and Michigan.

TCIC also received permission from the federal government to dredge an eight-foot channel in the bay from Bolivar Roads (at the east end of Galveston Island) to serve Texas City.

TCIC also built a 4-mi railroad to the Texas City Junction south of town, where it connected to two other rail lines: Galveston, Houston and San Antonio and Galveston-Houston and Henderson.

Even before the channel dredging was complete, the first ocean-going ship, SS Piqua, arrived at the port from Mexico on September 28, 1904.

[6] The 2nd Division of the United States Army deployed to Texas City in 1913 to guard the Gulf Coast from incursions during the Mexican Revolution, essentially encamping nearly half of the nation's land military personnel there, due to the perceived double threat that the Mexican Revolution might spill over across the border or that the neighboring country might become a German ally in the incipient World War.

[8] Speed and distance records were set by pilots trained and planes flying out of Texas City's impromptu military air base.

Moore was able to win this refinery from the Houston Ship Channel because of Texas City's location nearer the Gulf of Mexico.

The dike, famous among locals as being "the world's longest man-made fishing pier", extends roughly 5.2 mi (8 km) to the southeast into the mouth of Galveston Bay.

Enemy submarines had almost completely stopped the shipment of petroleum products to friendly countries from the Middle East, South America, and Southeast Asia.

Texas City refineries and chemical plants worked around the clock at full capacity to supply the war effort.

The government also funded construction of a petrochemical plant to make styrene monomer, a vital raw material for synthetic rubber.

Monsanto Chemical Company contracted to operate the facility, which became the nucleus of an even larger petrochemical complex after the war.

[7] The postwar prosperity was interrupted on the morning of April 16, 1947, when the French ship Grandcamp, containing ammonium nitrate fertilizer, exploded, initiating what is generally regarded as the worst industrial accident in United States history, the Texas City disaster.

Released from its mooring by the blast, the High Flyer rammed a third ship, SS Wilson B. Keene, docked across the slip.

[7] The steel-reinforced concrete grain elevator was pockmarked with shrapnel and the drive shaft of the Grandcamp was embedded in the headhouse.

School children and townspeople who were attracted to the smoke also died, and entire blocks of homes near the port were destroyed.

The city has often referred to itself as "the town that would not die," a moniker whose accuracy would be tested once again in the days surrounding Hurricane Ike's assault on the region early on September 13, 2008.

[9] On March 23, 2005, the city suffered another explosion in a local BP (formerly Amoco) oil refinery which killed 15 and injured 180.

[10][11] In the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB)'s final report on the accident, published in March 2007, they described the event as "one of the worst industrial disasters in recent U.S.

Even in the widespread destruction throughout Galveston County caused by the wind and surge associated with Ike, Texas City was largely spared the devastation that other low-lying areas suffered.

Texas City is mostly surrounded by a 17-mile-long (27 km) levee system that was built in the early 1960s following the devastating floods from Hurricane Carla in 1961.

Together with pump stations containing several Archimedes' screws located at various places throughout the northeast periphery of the city adjoining Galveston, Dollar Bay, and Moses Lake, the levee and pump station system may well have saved the city from wholesale devastation at the hands of Ike's powerful tidal surge.

Beginning Sunday, September 14, 2008, the day after landfall, Texas City's high school football complex, Stingaree Stadium, was used as a staging and relocation area for persons evacuated by National Guard Black Hawk helicopters from nearby bayfront communities such as the Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island.

Also, by the morning of Monday, September 15, the American Red Cross had opened a relief and material distribution center in the city.

The Texas City Dike was overtopped by a greater than 12-foot (3.7 m) storm surge when Hurricane Ike barreled through the region in the early-morning hours of Saturday, September 13, 2008.

[7][21] In recent decades, the city's planners have made efforts to diversify the economy into tourism, health care, and many other sectors.

The Texas City Terminal Railway Company provides an important land link to the port, handling over 25,000 carloads per year.