New Washington

The New Washington Association was formed in mid-1834 by New York investors, with Samuel Swartwout as president and Lorenzo de Zavala among its members, to buy the high peninsula at the head of Galveston Bay. On December 22, 1834, Morgan paid $3,200 in promissory notes for Nicholas Clopper's 1,600-acre homesite and held it in trust. The investors bought two schooners, the Kosciusko and the Flash, which the new republic chartered to bring troops and supplies from New Orleans. Mexico refused the company's damage claim in 1851 because its members had fought in the war.

What the plaque says

New Washington Located at the junction of Buffalo Bayou and San Jacinto Bay, the townsite of New Washington was settled by Col. James Morgan (1786-1866), who bought 1600 acres of land in the area in 1835. A native of Philadelphia, Morgan had come to Texas in 1830 and served at various times and places as merchant, civic leader, and land agent. While away from his home, serving as a colonel during the Texas Revolution, Mexican troops burned the town of New Washington. After the war, Morgan and others rebuilt New Washington, and the townsite began to flourish. Morgan realized, however, that it could never compete with the growth of nearby Houston, and during the 1850s he began to promote plans for a channel along Buffalo Bayou that would increase the region's trade potential. That dream was completed in 1876 with the dredging of the Houston Ship Channel by steamship tycoon Charles Morgan. As Houston continued to grow, New Washington was recognized only as a major bend for the ship traffic along the bayou. Now known as Morgan's Point, the townsite was incorporated in 1949 and stands as a reminder of the early commercial history of Harris County. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 7.0 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Space Center Houston — 9.9 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Emancipation Park — 22 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 — 23 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.

More markers nearby

• Gribble-Hofheinz House — 0.5 mi
• Bay Ridge / Morgan's Point — 0.7 mi
• Morgan's Point Cemetery — 1.0 mi
• Saint Mary's Seminary — 1.1 mi