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About Houston

Houston is an inland port city in Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties in southern Texas, serving as the seat of Harris county (1836). The Houston Ship Channel connects it to the Gulf of Mexico and the Intracoastal Waterway at Galveston, 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the southeast. Houston is the most populous city in Texas and the fourth biggest in the United States. Its towers rise from the unrelievedly flat Gulf Coastal Plain, which is divided by a series of bayous and is located in Houston at an elevation of roughly 55 feet (17 metres) above sea level. The climate is warm and humid, and the city is noted for its hot, sticky summers. In addition to Galveston, other notable cities in the Houston metropolitan area include Baytown, League City, Missouri City, Pasadena, Sugar Land, and Texas City. 601 square kilometers of land, founded in 1837. (1,559 square km). Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown Metro Area: 5,946,800; (2020): 2,304,580; Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land Metro Area: 7,122,240

History

The area’s first hamlet, Harrisburg (1826), was destroyed in April 1836 by Mexican commander Antonio López de Santa Anna, who was on the pursuit of Sam Houston and the Texas army. Santa Anna was captured a week later in the Battle of San Jacinto, and Texas was freed. Augustus C. and John K. Allen of New York acquired a property near burned-out Harrisburg in August 1836 and began marketing it as the future “great interior commercial center of Texas.” Two months later, John Allen persuaded the first Congress of the Republic of Texas, which was sitting in Columbia, to rename his town after Texas’ first elected president, Sam Houston. The move was ultimately criticized, and the administration lasted only two years (1837–39).

The town grew slowly as a cotton-shipping port, beset by yellow fever epidemics and mudslides; the first railroad arrived in 1853. During the American Civil War, it became a haven for Southerners fleeing the Union naval blockade. After being threatened temporarily in 1862 when Union forces took Galveston Island (which the Confederates promptly regained), Houston became the headquarters of the Confederacy’s Trans-Mississippi Department in 1863. (Texas and New Mexico Territory at the time). Segregation became an issue after the war, with segregated neighborhoods establishing for whites, Hispanics, and African Americans. When black US Army forces were stationed in the city, racial tensions flared, culminating in violent riots and the deaths of around 20 individuals.

By 1891, Houston had grown into a rail center, with 12 lines. After a major hurricane and flood destroyed Galveston’s port infrastructure in 1900, Houston emerged as the state’s principal port. The first pier was built in 1840, and in 1869, work began on widening and deepening Buffalo Bayou (which is now part of the Houston Ship Channel). By the early 1980s, the port, which was the third largest in terms of tonnage handled in the United States at the time, was handling more than 80 million tons of international, coastal, and canal cargo every year. The 1901 discovery of oil in the area generated considerable industrial expansion, driving the city’s ascent and prosperity from its 19th-century economic basis of cotton and lumber. Following the completion of the Houston Ship Channel in 1914, refineries were erected along it in the 1920s and 1930s.

World War II brought shipbuilding and petrochemical industries to Houston, and chemicals remained important after the war. In 1948, annexed territory nearly tripled the city’s size. At 1961, the Manned Spacecraft Center (later called the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center) opened in Clear Lake, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of downtown Houston, establishing Houston as a focal center of the nation’s space program. In the 1970s, Houston had an economic boom and rose to become a global leader in the oil business, with hundreds of companies establishing headquarters there. Until the oil industry went bankrupt in the mid-1980s, energy was the city’s mainstay. By the early 1990s, the city had recovered, but it suffered another blow when Enron Corp. (headquartered there) declared bankruptcy in 2001. In 1992, the city hosted the Republican National Convention, and the downtown area had a revival in the late 1990s with the establishment of new entertainment venues.

Following WWII, Houston’s rapid expansion was accompanied by increases in air and water pollution, as well as urban sprawl. Furthermore, despite efforts to manage it following big floods in 1929 and 1935, flooding has remained a persistent problem. Tropical Storm Allison hit the area in 2001, killing 22 people, destroying hundreds of homes and businesses, and producing considerable floods. Although Hurricane Ike killed much fewer people, it devastated Houston soon after making landfall in neighboring Galveston in September 2008. In August 2017, Storm Harvey, the most destructive hurricane to hit the United States in more than a decade, inundated the Houston area. The city received more than 16 inches (400 mm) of rain in a 24-hour period, resulting in deadly floods that claimed many lives.

In December 2009, Houston made political news when city controller Annise Parker was elected mayor. Parker, who campaigned on a financially prudent platform, became the first out gay mayor of a major U.S. city.

Information About Houston

Texas’s Houston is a sizable city that reaches Galveston Bay. It has a strong connection to NASA’s astronaut training and flight control complex’s Space Center Houston, the coastline visitor centre. The comparatively small city’s Downtown is home to the Theater District, where the famed Houston Grand Opera is located, and the Historic District, which features elegant restaurants and 19th-century architecture.

Area: 1,722 km²
Area code: 281, 346, 713, 832
Population: 2.313 million (2020)
Mayor: Sylvester Turner
Neighborhoods: Downtown Houston, Houston Heights, MORE