The Houston Ship channel was designated a National Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) in 1987. It is a 50-mile long channel connecting the Port of Houston to the Gulf of Mexico.
We chose this particular point to waymark the HSC because there are so many interesting things to do and see here, ranging from within just a few hundred feet to a few miles away. Many of these places have already been waymarked.
*The waymarked point is on the grounds of the Battle of San Jacinto State Historic Site, which comprises both the actual battleground where Texas won her independence from Mexico in 1836, and the area around the Battleship Texas to the north. Many sites and monuments commemorating people and events that played a role in the succesful outcome for the Republic of Texas can be found south of the TEXAS.
Come to the sundial area immediately southeast of the waymarked point to see replicas of the Twin Sisters cannon, gifts of the citizens of Cinncinnati, Ohio. These cannon served as subjects of the famed insolent and defiant Texian "Come and Take It" flag that taunted the Mexican Army at Gonzales. The town sisters were buried to keepthem out of the hands of the Mexican Army and have been lost since 1836.
Visit the grave of Lorenzo DeZavala, 1st VP of the Republic of Texas, and see the graves of several other Texas patriots in the tiny deZavala Cemtery that sports several historic markers.
Read a first-hand account of the battle and events leading to it in the tombstone of George Mason, a few dozen yards away in another small burial area of Texas patriots.
Finally, see where it all ended: Mexican General Santa Anna was brought here and surrendered his army to Sam Houston under a large (since removed) live oak tree that used to stand on the banks of the bayou (dredged to form part of the HSC) at the edge of the sundial plaza. The tree was removed after storm damage it unsafe for visitors to stand under. Other live oaks in the park did witness that historic day, so use your imagination and enjoy them.
*The waymarked point is just southeast of the wonderful, historic, floating museum-ship the USS TEXAS (BB 35). In fact, you had to walk past her to get here.
During WWI, the USS TEXAS was the most powerful weapon in the world. In 1927 she served as the flagship of the 4-star Admiral of the US Fleet ADM Henry A. Wiley. Texas played important roles in key battles in both WWI and WWII. On D-Day, 6 June 1944, the USS TEXAS was the flagship for the bombardment group supporting the Allied landings on Omaha Beach. She was decommissioned in 1948. Now she is the last of the Dreadnought battleships.
In 1978 she was designated by the state as the "official" flagship of fellow Texan and former US Navy Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. FADM Nimitz is widely credited with devising the strategies and tactics that won WWII in the Pacific for the United States. Brilliant AND lucky, FADM Nimitz is the last 5-star admiral of the US Navy.
*Across Independence Parkway directly east from the waymarked point stands the San Jacinto Munument, the tallest obelisk in the world. The history museum in the Monument displays artifacts, letters, and recreations of the battle. It has been greatly expanded and improved in recent years, and is well worth a visit.
*Several miles away in Pasdena TX you can visit the capture site of Mexican General Santa Anna, whose forces were defeated at the battle of San Jacinto. The site is on a bluff in an industrial area overlooking the HSC. In 1836 this was marshy bayou with a sea of tall grass and a few trees. Some Texian army soldiers found the General hiding in the grass, disguised in the uniform of a Mexican Army private, the day after the battle.
Santa Anna had grabbed a horse and fled the battlefield when he saw his army defeated. He was trying to escpae back to Mexico when he was captured. As the Texians brought him through the battle lines to drop him with the rest of the Mexican prisoners, Mexican Prisoners saw Santa Anna and greeted him respectfully with salutes and cries of "El General!"
That's when the soldiers knew what -- and who --they had. Instead of leaving Santa Anna with the mass of Mexican POWs, the Texian soldiers brought him to Gen. Sam Houston, who was lying wounded in his headquarters under a live oak along the bayou. Santa Anna surrendered to Houston, and it was all over but the paperwork.
Back to the subject of the waymark, which is a very cool thing in its own right too:
From the American Society of Civil Engineers website: (
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Houston, Texas
Completed 1914
Houston is truly the town that built a port that built a city."
- Fentress Bracewell Former Chairman, Houston Authority Commission
The 50-mile Houston Ship Channel is a manmade port for ocean-going vessels, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Houston and Harris County, Texas.
The waterway was originally known as Buffalo Bayou and was swampy, marshy, and overgrown with dense vegetation. Steamboats and shallow draft boats were the only vessels able to navigate its complicated channel. The dredging and deepening of the channel opened Houston to the world and is credited with fostering the growth and prosperity of the entire State of Texas. In 1909, Harris County citizens formed a navigation district (an autonomous governmental body charged with supervising the port) and issued bonds to fund half the cost of dredging the channel. The U.S. Congress providing matching funds.
When the ship channel opened in 1914, there were few industries located on its banks. By 1930 eight refiners had located there, and today the channel and surrounding area support the second largest petrochemical complex in the world.
Facts
1. The channel measures 40 feet deep for most of its length and runs from 300 to 400 feet in width.
2. The original depth was 25 feet and it was later deepened to 40 feet.
3. The channel stretches from the Gulf of Mexico through Galveston Bay and up the San Jacinto River, ending four miles east of downtown Houston.
4. When the ship channel formally opened on November 19, 1914, President Woodrow Wilson fired the salute to the occasion from his desk in the White House, by pushing an ivory button wired to a cannon in Houston.
From the handbook of Texas online article by marilyn Sibley: (
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HOUSTON SHIP CHANNEL. The Houston Ship Channel, one of the busiest waterways in the United States, achieved its earliest significance as a link between interior Texas and the sea. It traces its origin to early trade on Buffalo Bayou, which heads on the prairie thirty miles west of Houston in the extreme northeastern corner of Fort Bend County and runs southeast for fifty miles to the San Jacinto River and then into Galveston Bay. Recognizing the potential of the stream, the brothers John Kirby and Augustus Chapman Allen laid out the town of Houston at the head of navigation on Buffalo Bayou in 1836. The first steamboat, the Laura, arrived there on January 22, 1837. As the waterway proved to be the only one in Texas that was dependably navigable, planters over a large area brought their cotton to Houston to be shipped by barge or riverboat to Galveston, the best natural port in Texas. At Galveston cargoes were transferred to seagoing vessels and thence to market. Goods destined for the interior came upstream, and visitors and immigrants made the route one of the most traveled in Texas in the prerailroad era. Even after railroads and later automobiles diverted traffic, the route remained an important transportation artery for bulky goods. Initially, citizens of Houston took responsibility for clearing and maintaining the winding route to the sea. The city fathers established the Port of Houston on January 29, 1842, and the following year the Congress of the Republic of Texas granted the city the right to remove obstructions and otherwise improve the bayou. After Texas entered the Union, free wharfage was given to boat owners who contracted to keep the channel clean.
In the late 1850s Houston merchants chafed at the policies of the Galveston Wharf Company, which controlled Galveston harbor, and attempted to reach the sea without going through Galveston. After the interim of the Civil War, they renewed their efforts. In 1869 they organized the Buffalo Bayou Ship Channel Company to improve the channel, and in 1870 they persuaded Congress to make Houston a port of delivery. The United States Army Corps of Engineers surveyed the channel and recommended a width of 100 feet and a depth of six. Still, because of inadequate appropriations, this effort brought few improvements. At this point the Houstonians found an ally in Charles Morganqv, a pioneer in Gulf Coast shipping who had also run athwart the Galveston Wharf Company. Desiring to bypass Galveston, Morgan bought the Bayou Ship Channel Company in 1874 and within two years dredged a channel from Galveston Bay to the site of present Clinton near Houston. The first ocean vessel arrived there September 22, 1876. Although Morgan is sometimes called "the Father of the Houston Ship Channel," he soon shifted his attention from ships to railroads, and his line abandoned the route in 1883. The United States government purchased his improvements in 1890 and thereafter accepted primary responsibility for the channel.
Houston Congressman Thomas H. Ball, after becoming a member of the Rivers and Harbors Committee in 1897, won increased appropriations for the project. Congress also approved a depth of twenty-five feet and the location of the terminus at Long Reach, now the Turning Basin. Yet, by 1909 the channel had been dredged to only 18½ feet. Impatient at the slow progress, Mayor Horace Baldwin Rice led a delegation to Washington to present the "Houston Plan," which offered to pay one-half of the cost of dredging the channel to twenty-five feet. After receiving assurances that the facilities would be publicly owned, Congress accepted the offer. Prior to Houston's offer, no substantial contributions had ever been made by local interests, but since then no project has been adopted by the national government without local contributions. The Texas legislature passed a bill enabling Harris County to establish a navigation district. The citizens then approved a bond issue of $1,250,000. Jesse H. Jones arranged for the sale of the bonds, and the dredging began. It was completed on September 7, 1914, and celebrated with great fanfare in the city. Because of shipping conditions during World War I, its deep water development was delayed until after the war. In 1919 an ocean-going vessel, the Merry Mount, took the first shipment of cotton directly from Houston to a foreign market, thus inaugurating a trade that made Houston the leading cotton port in the United States within a decade. Oil, which had been discovered in Texas early in the twentieth century, increasingly rivaled cotton as the most important cargo on the channel. Petroleum also led to the industrialization of the waterfront, for the long, protected channel with its nearby crude oil supplies proved an attractive location for oil refineries. By 1930 nine oil refineries operating along the channel contributed to the channel tonnage. Although the Great Depression briefly interrupted the progress, the Port of Houston ranked third in the nation in the amount of tonnage carried on the eve of World War II.
The war suspended normal shipping activities, but gave further impetus to the industrialization of the waterway. In addition to increasing the demand for customary petroleum products, the war inspired the development of synthetic rubber based on a byproduct of petroleum. Two synthetic rubber plants were located near the channel while the war was in progress, and after the war the channel became a center of the petrochemical industry. In the postwar years the port also became a major shipping point for midwestern grain. Growing foreign trade and new industry boosted the port to second in tonnage in the nation in 1948, and from then until 1964 it customarily ranked second or third. Thecombination of industry and transportation facilities, including a network of railroads, trucklines, and interstate highways, influenced the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (see LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER) to select a site convenient to the channel as headquarters for the nation's space program in 1961.
Congress approved a project to widen the channel to 300 feet from Fidelity Island to the turning basin in 1945, and in 1957 army engineers recommended that the entire channel be deepened to forty feet. By 1964, the fiftieth anniversaryof the deepwater channel, the federal government had expended $64 million for channel improvement and maintenance, and the local government had invested $28 million in port facilities. In return, economic activities related to the channel yielded $148 million annually in taxes. The channel-side industrial complex, valued at $3 billion, and shipping activities gave employment to 55,000 persons who received $314 million in wages annually. The Port of Houston was the first in the nation to introduce container shipping. By the 1970s 4,500 ships flying the flags of sixty-one nations passed through the channel annually.
The heavy traffic alarmed environmentalists who noted growing pollution in the area and others who believed the Channel Industries Mutual Aid, formed in 1955, offered insufficient protection in case of accidents along the waterway. Between 1969 and 1972 some 700 vessel casualties were recorded, and in the 1980s and 1990s the channel received increasing attention from a series of oil spills, explosions, and collisions between tankers, freighters, and barges. At the time 90 percent of all poisonous cargo traveling by water passed through the channel, which remained only 200 feet wide and forty feet deep at its maximum. A single lawsuit sought recovery of $500 billion for damages. New plans to widen the channel were proposed, along with further new industrial tracts and petrochemical projects, but remained to be implemented." [end]