Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State — Map of Harris County, 1896
In the nearly four hundred years that it took for Texas to take its current shape, the space changed from an extensive, unexplored and sparsely settled frontier under the Spanish Crown to its iconic and easily recognizable outline. Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State traces the cartographic history of Texas from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Over fifty rare maps from the collections of the Texas General Land Office and the personal collection of Frank and Carol Holcomb, of Houston, are on display. Additional maps are on loan from The Bryan Museum in Galveston and the Witte Museum in San Antonio. This exhibit runs at the Houston Museum of Natural Science through October 8, 2017.
All Boundaries Are Local: Houston and Harris County
The settlement and development of Texas changed the boundaries surrounding Houston. First developed as part of Austin’s Colony, the area that would become Harris County grew to become an important railroad and commercial hub for Texas.
The cartographic transformations of Houston and Harris County, with an emphasis on its industrial-led growth, including railroads and the Houston Ship Channel, are shown in the map collection of the General Land Office. Also shown is the development of Harris County through the distribution of individual tracts issued through various land grant programs.
Map of Harris County, 1896
Harris (formerly Harrisburg) County comprises of 1,778 square miles and is the largest county in eastern Texas. It is made up of both timberlands and coastal bluffs.[1]
Herman Pressler’s Map of Harris County shows the county’s current borders, with all the original land grants issued in Harris County. The map includes nearly every type of issued land grant from Spain, Mexico, the Republic, and the state of Texas. The larger surveys with a yellowish hue indicate land that was granted by the Mexican government prior to 1836. Each plat is marked with the grantee’s name and the date the government granted it.[2]
Early Anglo settlers came to the area as part of Stephen F Austin’s Colony. The main town was Harrisburg, founded by John Richardson Harris upon his arrival in 1824.[3] Burned to the ground during Texas’s bid for independence from Mexico, Harrisburg never regained its former status as a port of entry to Texas and was later incorporated into the greater Houston area.
Houston was founded on August 30, 1836, when the Allen brothers, Augustus Chapman and John Kirby, placed an ad in the Telegraph & Texas Register for the establishment of a town named for Texas Revolutionary hero Sam Houston. They promised that it would be “a great interior commercial emporium of Texas.” Early Houston had just 12 residents and a single log cabin. By May 1837, the town had blossomed to a population of 1500 with 100 homes. The following month it was named the seat of Harris County.[4]
Though marketed by the Allens as a port for ships laden with goods, Buffalo Bayou was difficult to navigate. Efforts to improve the area and create a deep-water channel began as early as 1866. The Houston Ship Channel officially opened in 1914.
The map also illustrates that by 1896 Houston was a major railway hub in Texas. Several major railways converge in Houston. Rail lines first appeared in Texas in 1852.[5] By 1861, “Houston was the rail center of southeast Texas” with railroads radiating out of the city for 100 miles in several directions. Pressler’s map shows Houston’s importance to railroad transportation and commerce — as he indicates no other transportation routes on the map beside waterways.
The western portion of the county shows a large checkerboard block of land held by the Houston and Texas Central Railroad Company (H & T. C. R.R. Co.).[6] Texas granted land to railways and other companies as payment for internal improvements to the State.
A 2001 donation from Frost Bank funded this map’s conservation.
Can’t make it to Houston? You can view the majority of the maps in this exhibit in high definition on the GLO’s website where you can also purchase reproductions and support the Save Texas History Program.
[1] Handbook of Texas Online, Margaret Swett Henson, “Harris County,” accessed April 06, 2017, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hch07; Elisabeth Cruce Alvarez, Editor, “Harris County,” Texas Almanac: 2014–2015, College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press Consortium, 2014, p. 307.
[2] For more on the types of land grants issued in Texas, see the informational handouts here: http://www.glo.texas.gov/history/archives/forms/index.html.
[3] For more on Harrisburg, including a map also in the current exhibit, see https://medium.com/save-texas-history/mapping-texas-from-frontier-to-the-lone-star-state-harrisburg-texas-7c66053d8c2
[4] For more on the history of Houston see https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hdh03 and David G. McComb, Houston, A History University of Texas Press, 1981; The First Congress of the Republic of Texas formed Harrisburg County on December 22, 1836.
[5] For more on the first railroad in Texas see “Buffalo Bayou, Brazos, and Colorado — the First Railroad in Texas,” https://medium.com/save-texas-history/buffalo-bayou-brazos-and-colorado-the-first-railroad-in-texas-a1ff662f72b.
[6] For more on the H & TC RR Co see https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/eqh09
[7] Bryant’s Railroad Guide, Bryant’s Railroad Guide, the Tourists’ and Emigrants’ Hand-book of Travel, Austin, TX, 1875, GLO Document #93627, General Map Collection, Archives and Record Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX, p 71.
