1880
The Houston Post is established with J. L. Watson as Publisher
William R. Baker took office as mayor accompanied by a hand-picked slate of alderman chosen from amongst the city's foremost bankers and merchants. However, his six year administration was unable to solve the city's financial woes, and Baker left office with Houston $200,000 deeper in debt
Houston's population was 16,513 and 27,985 for Harris County
The first telephone exchange was installed in Houston. There were 50 telephones in the city
Congress appropriated $50,000 for ship channel improvements
Converging upon Houston were nine railroads with a total of 2,200 miles of track in operation and 1,800 under construction
The first electric arc street light is installed on Main Street at Preston Avenue
Texas' sheep population reaches six million
The Houston Chronicle is established with Marcellus E. Foster as Publisher
March 29
Former President U. S. Grant was a passenger on the first train to arrive at the new Union Station
August 30
The rail link between Houston and New Orleans was completed and the first scheduled passenger train between the two cities made its run
1881
Last battle with the Apache in Texas
Congress appropriated $50,000 for channel improvements
Due to regular widespread outbreaks in coastal areas of yellow fever, Dr. Carlos Finlay of Cuba first suggested that the fever was spread by the Aedes Aegypti mosquito. But residents of the Gulf Coast consumed tons more quinine before a U.S. Army Commission headed by Dr. Walter Reed finally proved the mosquito theory in 1900 and started to develop control measures
The School Board increased the upper age for free education from fourteen to eighteen years of age, making high school courses free
January 22
An agreement was drawn between the U. S. Government and the Morgan interests, whereby the government would be permitted to purchase the Morgan-financed channel improvements when the government completed its channel work to the cut in Morgan's Point. Difficulties would delay the takeover until 1892
December 31
The new five-story, brick, eighty-room Capitol Hotel opened. Built where the old capitol building had stood. This brick building at Texas and Main was being called the Capitol Hotel when William Marsh Rice bought it, and he kept that name. The trusties of his estate changed the name to Rice Hotel after Rice was murdered
1882
Railroad land grants end after give-away of more than thirty-two million acres
Congress set aside $94,500 for ship channel improvements
Five large cotton compresses were operating around the Houston docks
Summer
Adjoining property holders on two blocks of Main Street paid $10,000 a piece to pave the stretch with limestone squares over a gravel base. The city's first paving experiment was not a success
June
The Houston Electric Light and Power Company was granted a franchise
December
Houston has 10 railroads, electric lights, and telephones
1883
State constitution amended to provide firm educational funding by taxation
Congress received a report by Maj. S. M. Mansfield, which recommended improvements on Galveston Harbor rather than on Houston's ship channel. The report produced a suspension in federal spending on the channel until 1888
Houston and Galveston were connected via telephone.
June
The Morgan steamers discontinued regular service between Louisiana and Houston, preferring to use the rail service now available. The decision seriously reduced channel traffic
Houston has six policemen, four on the night shift
University of Texas at Austin opens its doors.
1884
Fence cutting made a felony crime by the Texas state legislature
W. H. Bailey started the Houston Herald
April 8
John L. Sullivan gives a sparring exhibition at Pilot's Opera House
The Houston Electric Light and Power Company inaugurated service with five
2,00-candlepower arc lights over Main Street
1885
XIT Ranch established on 3,050,000 acres in the Panhandle
A local unit of the Knights of Labor was formed
April
William Cowper Brann is on the editorial staff of the new "Houston Herald"
April 5
Houston Post begins publication
Prairie View State Normal School, first black land grant
college, holds first classes
1886
Knights of Labor strike against the railroads is broken by the Texas Rangers
Daniel C. Smith and a new slate of aldermen were elected on the "short hair" or labor ticket. With New York bondholders fearing debt repudiation, a compromise was quickly arranged to solve the city's debt problems
HAYMARKET riot erupts in Chicago and journalist Albert R. Parsons of Galveston is hanged for his participation
January
Dr. Ashbel Smith dies at his home "Evergreen" on Buffalo Bayou
1887
First American anti-trust law passed by the Texas legislature
The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word established the first general hospital in Houston at Franklin and Caroline. St. Joseph's Infirmary had 40 beds. It was the forerunner of the present St. Joseph's Hospital complex
The Houston Gas Light Company took over Houston Electric Light and Power
January
Edwin Booth plays "Hamlet" to a packed crowd at Pillot's Opera House
July
Henry Thompson, a Second Ward resident, drilled an artesian well which yielded almost pure water. He had tapped the third largest artesian reservoir in the United States
Interstate Commerce Act (co-sponsored by Rep. John H.
Regan of Texas) enacted by the U.S. Congress
1888
State capitol building, still the largest in the nation, built in Austin
The telephone company served 265 subscribers. The gas company had 20 miles of mains, and 6 streetcar lines operated on 14 miles of track
Houston fielded a professional baseball team in the Texas League
December
Houstonians spend $1,000,000 for buildings during the year
1889
Further Texas anti-trust legislation enacted
The Sweeny-Coombs Building at Main and Congress was built. It housed various businesses until Harris County bought this entire block in the 1970s as the site for the Harris County Administration Building. All the buildings were demolished except this one at the corner of Congress and Main and the one at the corner of Congress and Fannin. The Sweeney-Coombs Building was restored to house some of the county offices
December 11
Business was suspended, and flags flew at half-mast while memorial services for Jefferson Davis were held in the Market House
1890
James Stephen Hogg elected governor of Texas
Henry Scherffius became mayor
Lawyer John Henry Kirby moved to Houston from Tyler County and bought a big Victorian frame house at Smith and Gray. Kirby remodeled the house and turned it into the brick and stone mansion that still stands on the site. Kirby was a Democrat and some of the strategy for the 1928 Democratic National Convention was worked out in meetings in this house. He won some cases for forest owners and then went into the timber business himself, on a big scale
The Census gave Texas a population of more than two million. Seven counties had more people than Harris County. Houston's population was 27,557, three times that of 1870. Galveston had 29,084
Nebraska banker O. M. Carter came to Houston and bought up the two trolley systems then operating in the city. The cars were still being drawn by mules but Carter changed that. He consolidated the lines, formed the Houston City Street Railway Company, and put electric trolley in service in 1891. This made it possible for Carter to promise and deliver trolley service to Houston Heights, started the same year by Carter and the Omaha and South Texas Land Company. Twelve rail lines were operating in and out of the city by this time and Houston was the most important rail center in the state
After Charles Morgan died, the federal government bought the Morgan channel across Morgan's Point and eliminated the tolls. It was a plus for Houston but the bigger ships still had to stop at Galveston. The Southern Pacific acquired Morgan's rail line and the docks at Clinton
Houston's industry included 160 plants employing 5,000 workers on a payroll of over $2,000,000
The Sweeney and Coombs Opera House (Prince Theater) was opened. Actually a theater, it housed performances by Sarah Bernhardt, Maude Adams, and James Hackett among others
South Houston was annexed to the city
January 6
Prominent Houston and Galveston businessmen met at the Tremont Hotel in Galveston for the Deep Water Meeting where strategy was outlined for gaining channel improvements
September
The Houston Clearing House was established by five national banks in the city
September 19
The National Rivers and Harbors Act called for a pre-purchase evaluation of Morgan's improvement on the ship channel
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
By Marvin Hurley
HE population of the United States climbed to
50,155,783 in 1880, and New York became the first state to exceed five million
population. Early in the prior decade, Texas passed its first million mark, and
showed 1,591,749 people in 1880, when the federal census counted 16,513 in Houston and
27,985 in Harris County. Other counties showed a higher rate of increase than did
Harris County during this period, with Grayson County (Sherman) leading with a total of
38,108, Dallas County next with 33,488, Bexar County third with 30,470, Fayette (La
Grange) fourth with 27,996, and Harris fifth.
During this decade, Pasteur first applied the vaccination principle to anthrax and Koch discovered tuberculosis and cholera germs. The Eiffel Tower was completed in Paris, the Statue of Liberty unveiled in New York harbor, and the Washington Monument dedicated in Washington. The trial of anarchists for the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago reflected a period of labor unrest. Alaska had its first major gold strike and the Midwest experienced its first land boom, with crop diversification characterizing agriculture production. Twenty thousand people made the run into Oklahoma with the capture of Geronimo. The Interstate Commerce Commission became the first of the many federal regulatory agencies to come. Congress overrode a presidential veto to pass an $18,000,000 Rivers and Harbors Bill. The 10-story Home Insurance Building was completed in Chicago and the 11-story Tower Building in New York; engineers and architects claimed they were probably as high as steel-frame buildings could go. The first classes were held at the University of Texas, and "Texas Leaguer" became baseball parlance for a hit just over the infield.
The frontier had practically disappeared in Texas, and row crops were started where only cattle grazing had been practical before. The pay-as-you-go policy was established in state government and the state legislature passed important educational measures, with rapid advances in public education coming for the next several years. Conflict developed in West Texas between the cattlemen and the row crop farmers, between the big rancher and the little farmer, and between the open-range people and those who were buying land and fencing it in. Barbed wire came to the area, and fence-cutting became so general that it threatened to bring on civil war. But during the same period, cattle raising changed "from frontier adventure to business enterprise." according to Stuart McGregor in the "Texas Almanac."
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The Market House, circa 1889. |
Former President U.S. Grant came to Houston in 1880 to help 5,000 cheering residents open the new Union Station. The first passenger train made the Houston-New Orleans run on August 30 of that year, and the first "through" freight arrived from San Francisco on January 15,1882, including a carload of salmon. After twice threatening to secede from Houston, Fifth Ward residents, who felt that they lived "on the other side," were appeased with an iron drawbridge across Buffalo Bayou in January, 1883, and with "handsome new buses."
By 1886, an arc-light winked at the corner of Main and Preston streets. Horse-drawn barges floated courting couples down the moon-lit bayou. Gilbert & Sullivan packed Pilot's Opera House; there Edwin Booth also played Hamlet to capacity crowds. Houston's educational facilities were reported to include a Clopper Institute as well as an English-German Institute.
By Mid-decade a dozen steamships and 22 schooners were scheduling daily voyages from the foot of Main Street, which was the original Allen's Landing. The Chamber of Commerce was already urging a deepwater Ship Channel for Houston, citing as an example the man-deepened Clyde River which made Glasgow a center for world trade in Scotland. Houston at this time had two ice factories, two breweries, and five banks. Ten railroads served the city and the port.
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Writing about this period in his book, "Building Texas" Carl Blasig says: After 1880, the growth of Texas cities, in which the newly organized commercial bodies (Chamber of Commerce) took an active part, continued. The Indians had been subdued and crime and lawlessness were diminishing under the vigilant eyes of Texas Rangers and other peace officers. Texas had become a desirable place in which to live. Railroad transportation, commercial enterprises, and industry expanded. Urban population again tripled during the last two decades of the century... As the social and economic forces grew stronger with the passing of the frontier, and the way of living became more competitive, Texans became conscious of the need for united action to safeguard their interests and also for the need of governmental regulations of certain phases of the state's growing economy."
The peopling of Texas
by the Anglo-Americans was part of the westward movement--the spread of population across
the vast expanses of the American continent, according to Dr. F. A. Buechel, research
director for the Houston Chamber of Commerce for many years. This movement had come
to be recognized as the dominant institutional force in the American economic development
in the 19th century. The people sought rich natural resources, including land
ownership, which could be had almost for the asking.
Texas' economic development has been the result of a series of impacts of these greater external forces, both national and international, coming to terms with the natural environment of the state. The rise of cattle, cotton and lumber production in Texas was the result of shifts in production of these products as each advanced across the United States into new producing regions on the one hand and the utilization of Texas' main natural resources, such as native grasses, soils and forests, on the other. These three groups, important as they were in the early years, have assumed greatly added significance ever since.
he growth of cotton, livestock and lumber production in
the latter third of the 19th century was paralleled by the extension of railroads into the
state and the growth of commercial centers in the major regions of the state. Even
in more developed areas, it was not until the latter part of the 19th century that mineral
resources began to be used in comparatively large amounts. Modern mass production
industry which consumes minerals in such vast quantities grew directly out of the
revolutionary developments in the production of iron and steel during the last quarter of
the last century, a movement based upon the successful application of the Bessemer process
together with associated techniques.
