In August 1836, two real estate entrepreneurs from New York,
Augustus Chapman Allen and
John Kirby Allen, purchased 6,642 acres (26.88 km
2) of land along
Buffalo Bayou with the intent of founding a city.
[16] The Allen brothers decided to name the city after
Sam Houston, the popular general at the
Battle of San Jacinto,
[16]
who was elected President of Texas in September 1836. The great
majority of slaves in Texas came with their owners from the older slave
states. Sizable numbers, however, came through the domestic slave trade.
New Orleans was the center of this trade in the Deep South, but slave
dealers were in Houston. Thousands of
enslaved African Americans lived near the city before the
Civil War.
Many of them near the city worked on sugar and cotton plantations,
while most of those in the city limits had domestic and artisan jobs.
Houston was granted incorporation on June 5, 1837, with
James S. Holman becoming its first mayor.
[9]
In the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County
(now Harris County) and the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas.
[17]
In 1840, the community established a chamber of commerce in part to
promote shipping and waterborne business at the newly created port on
Buffalo Bayou.
[18]
By 1860, Houston had emerged as a commercial and railroad hub for the export of cotton.
[17] Railroad spurs from the Texas inland converged in Houston, where they met rail lines to the ports of
Galveston and
Beaumont. During the
American Civil War, Houston served as a headquarters for General
John Bankhead Magruder, who used the city as an organization point for the
Battle of Galveston.
[19]
After the Civil War, Houston businessmen initiated efforts to widen the
city's extensive system of bayous so the city could accept more
commerce between downtown and the nearby port of Galveston. By 1890,
Houston was the railroad center of Texas.
In 1900, after Galveston was struck by a devastating
hurricane, efforts to make Houston into a viable deep-water port were accelerated.
[20] The following year, the discovery of oil at the
Spindletop oil field near Beaumont prompted the development of the Texas petroleum industry.
[21] In 1902, President
Theodore Roosevelt
approved a $1 million improvement project for the Houston Ship Channel.
By 1910, the city's population had reached 78,800, almost doubling from
a decade before. African Americans formed a large part of the city's
population, numbering 23,929 people, which was nearly one-third of the
residents.
[22]
President
Woodrow Wilson
opened the deep-water Port of Houston in 1914, seven years after
digging began. By 1930, Houston had become Texas' most populous city and
Harris County the most populous county.
[23] In 1940, the Census Bureau reported Houston's population as 77.5% white and 22.4% black.
[24]
Downtown Houston,
c. 1927
When
World War II
started, tonnage levels at the port decreased and shipping activities
were suspended; however, the war did provide economic benefits for the
city. Petrochemical refineries and manufacturing plants were constructed
along the ship channel because of the demand for petroleum and
synthetic rubber products by the defense industry during the war.
[25] Ellington Field, initially built during
World War I, was revitalized as an advanced training center for bombardiers and navigators.
[26] The
Brown Shipbuilding Company was founded in 1942 to build ships for the
U.S. Navy
during World War II. Due to the boom in defense jobs, thousands of new
workers migrated to the city, both blacks and whites competing for the
higher-paying jobs. President Roosevelt had established a policy of
nondiscrimination for defense contractors, and blacks gained some
opportunities, especially in shipbuilding, although not without
resistance from whites and increasing social tensions that erupted into
occasional violence. Economic gains of blacks who entered defense
industries continued in the postwar years.
[27]
In 1945, the M.D. Anderson Foundation formed the
Texas Medical Center.
After the war, Houston's economy reverted to being primarily
port-driven. In 1948, the city annexed several unincorporated areas,
more than doubling its size. Houston proper began to spread across the
region.
[9][28]
In 1950, the availability of air conditioning provided impetus for
many companies to relocate to Houston, where wages were lower than the
North; this resulted in an economic boom and produced a key shift in the
city's economy toward the energy sector.
[29][30]
Ashburn's Houston City Map (
c. 1956)
The increased production of the expanded shipbuilding industry during World War II spurred Houston's growth,
[31] as did the establishment in 1961 of NASA's "Manned Spacecraft Center" (renamed the
Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in 1973). This was the stimulus for the development of the city's aerospace industry. The
Astrodome, nicknamed the "
Eighth Wonder of the World",
[32] opened in 1965 as the world's first indoor domed sports stadium.
During the late 1970s, Houston had a population boom as people from the
Rust Belt states moved to Texas in large numbers.
[33] The new residents came for numerous employment opportunities in the petroleum industry, created as a result of the
Arab oil embargo.
With the increase in professional jobs, Houston has become a
destination for many college-educated persons, including African
Americans in a reverse
Great Migration from northern areas.
In 1997, Houstonians elected
Lee P. Brown as the city's first African American mayor.
[34]
In June 2001,
Tropical Storm Allison
dumped up to 40 inches (1,000 mm) of rain on parts of Houston, causing
the worst flooding in the city's history. The storm cost billions of
dollars in damage and killed 20 people in Texas.
[35] By December of that same year, Houston-based energy company
Enron
collapsed into the third-largest ever U.S. bankruptcy during an
investigation surrounding fabricated partnerships that were allegedly
used to hide debt and inflate profits.
In August 2005, Houston became a shelter to more than 150,000 people from New Orleans, who evacuated from
Hurricane Katrina.
[36] One month later, about 2.5 million Houston-area residents evacuated when
Hurricane Rita approached the
Gulf Coast, leaving little damage to the Houston area. This was the largest urban evacuation in the history of the United States.
[37][38] In September 2008, Houston was hit by
Hurricane Ike. As many as 40% refused to leave
Galveston Island because they feared the type of traffic problems that had happened after
Hurricane Rita.
During the floods in
2015 and
2016, parts of the city were covered in several inches of water.
[39]
In 2017, Houston hosted
Super Bowl LI.
[40] This is the third Super Bowl for the city, with the last games being held in 1974 and 2004.
[41]
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