Houston's Deep-Water Port

The plaque stops in the 1920s, before the petrochemical age. Nine oil refineries worked along the channel by 1930. During World War II two synthetic rubber plants went up near the water, and the channel became a petrochemical center after the war. By 1948 the Port of Houston ranked second in the nation in tonnage. The industry brought hazards with it: Channel Industries Mutual Aid formed in 1955, about 700 vessel casualties were recorded between 1969 and 1972, and in the 1980s and 1990s 90 percent of all poisonous cargo moving by water passed through.

What the plaque says

Houston's Deep-Water Port AS EARLY AS THE 1820s, SHIPS BEGAN USING BUFFALO BAYOU TO CONNECT HARRISBURG, NOW PART OF HOUSTON, TO GALVESTON BAY AND THE GULF OF MEXICO. AS MORE PEOPLE CAME TO HOUSTON, TRAFFIC AND COMMERCE ALONG THE BAYOU GREW AND THE NEED FOR A DEEPER WATERWAY BECAME APPARENT. AFTER CHARLES STEWART, U.S. CONGRESSMAN FROM HOUSTON, BROUGHT ATTENTION TO THE NEED FOR WORK ALONG THE BAYOU IN THE 1880s, U.S. REPRESENTATIVE JOSEPH C. HUTCHESON CHAMPIONED A BILL ALLOWING FOR THE COMMITTEE ON RIVERS AND HARBORS TO SURVEY THE WATERWAY. CONGRESSMAN THOMAS BALL LED THE DELEGATION ON THE SURVEY TOUR AND THEY AGREED THAT HOUSTON WAS DESTINED TO BE A SEAPORT. THE DESTRUCTION OF GALVESTON'S PORT DURING THE GREAT STORM OF 1900 CREATED INCREASED PRESSURE FOR A LARGER AND SAFER INLAND DEEP-WATER PORT. DURING THE EARLY 1900s, THOMAS BALL TRIED TO CONVINCE CONGRESS TO SUPPORT FULLY A DEEP-WATER PORT FOR HOUSTON. BUSINESS AND CIVIC LEADERS JOINED FORCES IN 1909, ALLOWING BALL TO PROPOSE THE "HOUSTON PLAN," IN WHICH LOCAL CONSTITUENTS OFFERED TO PAY HALF THE COST OF THE DEEP-WATER DREDGING. CONGRESS ACCEPTED THE OFFER AND THIS COST-SHARING AGREEMENT SET A PRECEDENT FOR FUNDING OF FUTURE FEDERAL PROJECTS. WORK BEGAN IN 1912 AND THE 52-MILE-LONG DEEP-WATER CHANNEL OFFICIALLY OPENED ON NOVEMBER 10, 1914. BY 1919, HOUSTON WAS THE SECOND-LARGEST SPOT COTTON EXPORT PORT IN THE U.S., WITH EXPORTS GROWING EXPONENTIALLY EACH YEAR DURING THE 1920s. BUSINESS ALONG THE PORT GREW, BRINGING NEW INDUSTRIES SUCH AS PAPER MILLS, MOTOR FUEL REFINERIES AND THE FIRST CONTAINER TERMINAL ALONG THE TEXAS GULF COAST. HOUSTON'S DEEP-WATER PORT TRANSFORMED A FLEDGLING COMMUNITY INTO AN INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED CENTER OF COMMERCE. (2013)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emancipation Park — 4.4 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.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 4.8 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.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 5.2 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.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 6.1 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.

More markers nearby

• Thomas H. Ball, Jr. — steps away
• "Constitution" Bend — steps away
• Magnolia Park — 0.8 mi
• Lorenzo de Zavala — 0.8 mi