The City Of Houston History:

Houston was founded on August 30, 1836, by John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen. The original name is after General Sam Houston, who made the city his headquarters at the time of its founding during the Texas Revolution. A large number of slaves attracted to the city for work helped make it a center for trading in cotton, and later rice as a commodity crop. During this period many freedmen increasingly left plantations to live as wage laborers in towns such as Houston; seeking to control their own labor as well as acquire schools for their children. They became free by taking advantage of generous Reconstruction-era laws that gave Freedmen more rights than formerly enslaved people and even immigrants who came to America without papers could claim citizenship thanks to the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Houston has had four distinct eras of boom, bust, and recovery. The first was linked to growth in markets for Texas cotton; the second tied to oil discovery and resulting industrialization; the third driven by medical needs of the post-World War Two baby-boom generation, and now by new energy fields such as space exploration, medicine, biomedical research, aerospace industry, and manufacturing. Houston is home to most of the largest oil company headquarters in the United States: ExxonMobil, Halliburton, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Kinder Morgan are among the many significant corporations headquartered there besides NASA’s Johnson Space Center. On March 24 1990 a killing freeze hit South Texas with temperatures falling to 12 degrees. Uncorrected research at the time claimed that this was a one-time event. However, since then three more freezes have struck making it clear that this is an ongoing threat to Houston’s economy. The city has now decided to take climate change seriously and begun efforts to transform itself into a “green” city before it’s too late.

Houston has had four distinct eras of boom, bust, and recovery.

The first was linked to growth in markets for Texas cotton; the second tied to oil discovery and resulting industrialization; the third driven by medical needs of the post-World War Two baby-boom generation, and now by new energy fields such as space exploration, medicine, biomedical research, aerospace industry, and manufacturing.