Las Lomitas

In 1990 Houston, covering 540 square miles, ranked as the fourth largest city in the United States with a population of 1,630,553. The city passed Philadelphia in 1984 to take a position behind New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. The consolidated metropolitan population of Houston, which encompassed Galveston, Fort Bend, Harris, Brazoria, Liberty, Waller, and Montgomery counties, amounted to 3,711,000, ranked tenth in the nation, and was second in Texas to Dallas-Fort Worth. When first formed in 1949 the Houston Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area covered only Harris County and had a population of 806,701 people. Over 100 ethnic groups now shape the population; the major components in 1987 were 56 percent white, 17 percent black, 17 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian. This spectacular growth developed as a result of the construction of transportation systems, the fortuitous nearby location of useful natural resources, and an entrepreneurial spirit. The city began on August 30, 1836, when Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen ran an advertisement in the Telegraph and Texas Register for the "Town of Houston." The townsite, which featured a mixture of timber and grassland, was on the level Coastal Plain in the middle of the future Harris County, at 95.4? west longitude and 30.3? north latitude. The brothers claimed that the town would become the "great interior commercial emporium of Texas," that ships from New York and New Orleans could sail up Buffalo Bayou to its door, and that the site enjoyed a healthy, cool seabreeze. They noted plans to build a sawmill and offered lots for sale at moderate prices. In the manner of town boomers the Allens exaggerated a bit, however. The forty-three-inch annual rainfall and temperatures that averaged from a low of 45? F in the winter to 93? in summer later inspired Houston to become one of the most air-conditioned cities in the world. Moreover, in January 1837, when Francis R. Lubbock arrived on the Laura , the small steamship that first reached Houston, he found the bayou choked with branches and the town almost invisible.