More dignitaries than anyone in attendance could shake a stick at those gathered on Nov. 10, 1914 for the gala grand opening of the Port of Houston and Ship Channel.
Today the 25-mile-long waterway and the inland harbor it serves are taken for granted, as if both were somehow always there and not man-made marvels. But Houstonians and Texans in general would do well to remember that the second busiest port in the United States was the product of a herculean effort by their ancestors.
In January 1837, less than a year after the Battle of San Jacinto, a runt of a paddlewheel steamer called the Laura became the first vessel to master the twists, turns and natural obstacles of Buffalo Bayou on the hazardous voyage to the Allen brothers’ new town. Even though the last leg of the difficult trip from the settlement of Harrisburg measured only a dozen miles, it took the crew three full days to blaze a path through the underbrush and overhanging trees.
Future governor Francis R. Lubbock, a passenger on the Laura, wrote in his autobiography years later that the captain missed his port of call on the first pass. “We backed down the bayou, and by close observations discovered a road or street laid off from (the) water’s edge. Upon landing we found stakes and footprints, indications that we were in the town tract.”
Five years later in 1842, the Republic of Texas gave the town named after the sovereign nation’s original president the authority to remove any and all obstacles to navigation from the backwater bayou. But a quarter century and a Civil War would pass before meaningful progress was made.
Finally, in 1869, the Buffalo Bayou Ship Channel Company was created and succeeded in convincing Congress to name Houston an official “port of entry.” When $25,000 in federal funds went to the city of Galveston for deepening Galveston Bay, Houston responded by enlisting shipping pioneer Charles Morgan to dredge its channel up to 16 feet all the way to the mouth of Sims Bayou. To the delight of Galveston’s chief rival, Morgan completed the project in September 1876, and within days the first ocean-going steamer docked at the port of Clinton.
That was where matters stood for the next 14 years. Then along came President Benjamin Harrison, whose Republican administration funded deep-water improvements to Galveston Bay to the tune of half a million dollars. Knocked for a loop by their competitors’ unexpected windfall, Bayou City leaders took public consolation in the slogan “Houston: Where Seventeen Railroads Meet the Sea” but in private feared “The Oleander City” would remain Texas’ top port no matter what.
And that almost certainly would have been the case were it not for the Great Storm of Sep. 8, 1900. For those Galvestonians, who survived the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the North American continent, the construction of a seawall and the elevation of the island took precedence over deep-water dreams, which had ceased to seem all that important.
Distracted by the Spindletop discovery and the oil boom it unleashed, Houston did not get back to ship-channel business until 1909. Mayor Horace Baldwin Rice approached the same Congressional committee that had shown Galveston such generosity with the “Houston Plan,” a simple arrangement that called for the city and the federal government to split the cost of the final phase of development of the Houston Ship Channel.
In record time, at least by Washington standards, the committee put up its half of the two and a half million dollars. Businessman and newspaper publisher Jesse Jones needed less than 24 hours to talk a group of Houston bankers into backing the bonds for the other half on condition the voters got on-board. They did, by a three-to-one, margin, and it was full-steam ahead.
The elaborate celebration of the opening of the Houston Ship Channel was a big deal indeed. It was described in vivid detail in a recent special issue of Houston History magazine:
“Spectators wishing to view the ceremony could board a train from Houston’s Grand Central Depot and travel to the site for a round trip cost of twenty-five cents. A water parade of pleasure and racing boats, decorated launches and representative boats from all Texas gulf ports formed a ‘Pageant of Boats’ to accompany the event.”
“At 11:00 a.m. local time, President Wilson excused himself from a Cabinet meeting to press a remote button that communicated a telegraph signal to Houston, firing a cannon located at the ceremonial site.”
With three current and future governors (Oscar B. Colquitt, James E. Ferguson and William P. Hobby) looking on, “Miss Sue Campbell (daughter of the Houston mayor) dropped white rose petals onto the water and said, ‘I christen thee Port Houston. Hither the boats of all nations may come and receive hearty welcome.’”
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