Houston & San Jacinto
The San Jacinto battleground and monument, Mission Control at Space Center Houston, Emancipation Park, Buffalo Bayou and the Ship Channel, Richmond and Brazos Bend.
Houston began on Buffalo Bayou in August 1836, when Augustus Chapman and John Kirby Allen advertised a town they named for Sam Houston, and it was the capital of the Republic until 1839. The bayou was choked with snags, and it took the Houston Ship Channel, dredged through Galveston Bay and opened in 1914, to make the city a deepwater port lined with refineries.
East on State Highway 225 the channel passes the San Jacinto battleground. There, on April 21, 1836, Houston's army of about 910 men attacked Santa Anna's camp and won in eighteen minutes, and the Revolution was over. A 567-foot monument, finished in 1939, stands over the field. Down the bay at Clear Lake, the Manned Spacecraft Center opened in 1963 to run human spaceflight, took Lyndon Johnson's name in 1973, and shows Mission Control through Space Center Houston.
In 1872 Black Houstonians signed the deed for ten acres for their Juneteenth celebrations, and Emancipation Park in the Third Ward still keeps them. In August 1917, after police beat and shot at one of their corporals, Black soldiers of the Twenty-fourth Infantry guarding Camp Logan marched on the city. Sixteen white residents and four soldiers died, and the Army hanged nineteen men. West on the Brazos, Jared Groce brought enslaved people to Waller County in 1821, and Fort Bend holds Richmond and Brazos Bend.
What to See in Houston & San Jacinto
9 places across the region, grouped by what they are.
Natural Areas
Historic Sites
Towns & Gateways
Attractions
Houston & San Jacinto rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.
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