Allen's Landing

Buffalo Bayou proved the only dependably navigable stream in Texas, so planters across a wide area hauled their cotton to this landing to go by barge or riverboat to Galveston, where it was moved onto seagoing ships. Goods for the interior came upstream, and with visitors and immigrants it made the route one of the most traveled in Texas before the railroads. Houston merchants came to resent the Galveston Wharf Company's control of that harbor; they organized the Buffalo Bayou Ship Channel Company in 1869 and in 1870 got Congress to make Houston a port of delivery.

What the plaque says

Allen's Landing This Houston City Park, created in 1967, is on the site of Houston's first port, ocean-going ships, both steamers and sailing vessels, loaded and unloaded freight here, beginning with visit of the steamer "Laura," which docked on January 26, 1837. The farsighted Allen brothers, Augustus C. and John K., located their city here primarily because they considered Houston "the head of navigation" on Buffalo Bayou. Although shallow and winding, Buffalo Bayou contributed immeasurably to growth of Houston from its earliest days. The confluence of Buffalo and White Oak bayous provided a natural turning basin for the small ships of the day. The Port of Houston was officially established by the city on June 8, 1841. Over the years Houston has labored for deeper water. In 1910 the United States Congress adopted the "Houston Plan," whereby the navigation district and Federal government shared costs of dredging a ship channel from the Gulf to the present turning basin, 4.25 miles east of this point. This deep water channel brings the world's commerce to one of the largest ports in the nation. However, to this day barges move much freight on up the bayou to downtown Houston. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.8 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 2.0 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 2.3 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.9 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Harris County — steps away
• Old Market Square — steps away
• Harris County Courthouse of 1910 — 0.2 mi
• Christ Church Cathedral — 0.4 mi