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A shipwrecked Spanish soldier, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, was the first European to visit the Houston area. He lived and traded among native Karankawa Indians from 1528 to 1534. It was not until 1823, however, in the first years of Angelo American migration to Texas, that a trading post was built at the junction of Buffalo Bayou and Bray's bayous by John R. Harris, a New Yorker. The townsite laid out there in 1826 was named Harrisburg. It eventually was to become part of modern Houston.
Harrisburg thrived as a lumber milling and shipping town. For a few weeks early in 1836 it was the capital of the newly proclaimed Republic of Texas. In April 1836, shortly before the Texan victory at the nearby battle of San Jacinto, the town was burned and occupied by Mexican troops.
Two real estate speculators, the brothers John K. and Augustus C. Allen, then founded a new town several miles up Buffalo Bayou, at the mouth of White Oak Bayou. They shrewdly named it after the Texan war hero Gen. Sam Houston. While Harrisburg lay temporarily in ruins, an energetic publicity campaign brought hundreds of settlers to Houston. The city was incorporated on June 5, 1837. James Holman was the first mayor. From 1837 until 1839, and again in 1842, it was the capital of the Republic of Texas.
As Houston became a leading outlet for the cotton, lumber, and sugar produced in the surrounding region, regular steamboat service to the Gulf was begun on Buffalo Bayou. By the 1850's the city had become an important railroad center. In 1866 it annexed Harrisburg. During the Civil War Houston prospered as a Confederate port and military headquarters but suffered no war damage. Afterward, in 1865, it was occupied by Union troops.
The first free public schools were set up in 1876. Electric street lighting was introduced in the 1880's. The first electric streetcars began operating in 1891. During these years yellow-fever epidemics periodically swept the area.
Houston began to emerge as a modern metropolis after the discovery of the Spindletop oil field near Beaumont in 1901. As a result of successive waves of oil discoveries at nearby Humble in 1904 and then elsewhere in eastern Texas, there was a massive growth of industry in Houston. Industrialization, especially in fields related to petroleum refining and the production of petrochemicals, was most rapid during World Wars I and II.
The Port of Houston, first organized in 1841, also grew rapidly. Periodic straightening, widening, and deepening of Buffalo bayou culminated in the opening of the first Houston Ship Channel in 1876. Devastation in the Port of Galveston by hurricane floods of 1900 resulted in the diversion of considerable shipping to Houston. This led to further dredging of the channel to 18 feet by 1908. However, the Port of Houston was not able to receive deep draft ocean vessels until the Turning Basin and a 25 foot deep channel to the Gulf were opened to traffic in 1915.
Meanwhile, Houston's population was booming. For many decades the city had grown quite slowly, with a sevenfold increase to 292,352 inhabitants, Houston Texans had become the largest city in Texas. By 1950 it was the largest in the entire South.