Houston

The turning point that transformed Houston from a provincial railroad hub into a global titan came at the dawn of the twentieth century, delivered by a double stroke of tragedy and natural fortune. In September 1900, a catastrophic hurricane tore through Galveston, destroying the island city and convincing both industrial leaders and the federal government that Texas needed a secure, inland deep-water port. Two years later, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a $1 million appropriation to transform the shallow Buffalo Bayou into the Houston Ship Channel. Almost simultaneously, the discovery of oil at the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont in 1901 ignited the Texas petroleum boom. Houston, with its converged rail lines and developing channel, became the natural headquarters for the new industry. By 1910, the city’s population had nearly doubled to 78,800—with African Americans making up nearly a third of those residents—and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson officially opened the deep-water Port of Houston.

As the twentieth century progressed, the city proved remarkably adept at reinventing its economy while sprawling outward across the coastal plain. During the Second World War, when German U-boats threatened Atlantic shipping and domestic demand for fuel and synthetic rubber soared, massive petrochemical refineries and manufacturing plants sprouted along the ship channel. Ellington Field was reactivated to train military navigators, and the Brown Shipbuilding Company arose to churn out vessels for the U.S. Navy. The abundance of high-paying defense jobs drew thousands of Black and white workers to the city. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s nondiscrimination policy for defense contractors opened new economic doors for African American workers, it also sparked intense racial friction and occasional violence from white residents. After the war, the momentum continued. In 1945, the M.D. Anderson Foundation established the Texas Medical Center, which would grow to become the largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions in the world. Three years later, the city annexed vast tracts of unincorporated land, doubling its physical footprint. But it was the widespread introduction of residential and commercial air conditioning in 1950 that truly unlocked the city’s potential, allowing northern businesses to escape the Rust Belt and relocate to a region with lower wages and endless room to grow.

The arrival of the Space Age added a new layer to the city's identity. In 1961, NASA established its Manned Spacecraft Center—later renamed the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center—providing the spark for a sophisticated aerospace industry and earning the city its "Space City" moniker. Four years later, Houston opened the Astrodome, hailed as the "Eighth Wonder of the World" and the first indoor domed sports stadium, proving that human engineering could conquer even the oppressive Texas summer. When the Arab oil embargo of the late 1970s sent oil prices soaring, another massive wave of migrants arrived from the northern states, including college-educated African Americans participating in a historic reverse Great Migration to the South. By the close of the century, Houston's political and social landscape had shifted dramatically alongside its demographics. In 1997, the city elected Lee P. Brown as its first African American mayor.

Today, Houston stands as the fourth-most populous city in the United States and the anchor of a metropolitan region of nearly eight million people. Its economy remains bound to the fortunes of energy giants like ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton, though it has weathered spectacular corporate shocks, such as the sudden 2001 collapse of the Enron Corporation. Yet the true story of modern Houston is one of radical diversity. It has become one of the most ethnically and racially diverse urban areas in North America, a global crossroads where international tonnage at its port ranks first in the nation, and where its sprawling neighborhoods are home to vibrant immigrant communities from every corner of the earth. But this colossal growth has come with a recurring vulnerability. Built on a low-lying network of slow-moving bayous, the city remains perpetually at the mercy of the Gulf’s tropical weather, punctuated by events like Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, which dumped forty inches of rain and caused billions in damage. It is a city built on water and oil, a place that began as an audacious real estate gamble in a swamp and ended up claiming the stars.