Marilyn Mcadams Sibley - The Port of Houston: A History

THE PORT OF HOUSTON

A HISTORY

Marilyn McAdams Sibley

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS
AUSTIN

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 6821251

Copyright 1968 by Marilyn McAdams Sibley

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-292-74812-5 (library e-book)
ISBN 978-0-292-78367-6 (individual e-book)

DOI 10.7560/736191

GITTINGS

DEDICATED TO
WILLIAM NEAL BLANTON
18901967

FOREWORD

The Board of Navigation and Canal Commissioners of the Port of Houston has long believed that a definitive history should be written to chronicle the growth of the Port and record its contribution to the development of the city. Consequently, shortly after the observance of Houstons fiftieth anniversary as a deep-water port in November of 1964, the Board, encouraged by the unflagging interest of the late Commissioner W. N. Blanton during his more than a dozen years of service, commissioned Dr. Marilyn McAdams Sibley to prepare such a history, which is respectfully dedicated to Commissioner Blantons memory.

This work is the result of Dr. Sibleys lengthy and exhaustive research, coupled with her own recognized ability as a narrator and historian. It presents for the first time the full and complete story of the nations third largest port from the days it was little more than a steamboat landing on a shallow and tortuous bayou, down to the immensity of its present operation.

To those men of vision who foresaw and worked for this great potential, to those men who served before us on this Port Commission, to those hundreds who have labored to build and operate this Port and to those who have assisted in the publication of this history, we are, indeed, grateful.

Howard T. Tellepsen, Chairman

R. H. Pruett, Commissioner

E. H. Henderson, Commissioner

W. D. Haden II, Commissioner

W. C. Wells, Commissioner

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like the Port of Houston, this book is the work of many people. In a special way it is the work of the late William N. Blanton, who as Port commissioner for thirteen years was fascinated by the history of the Port and felt that it should be recorded. Over a period of years Mr. Blanton collected material, and, after the Port Commission arranged for the history to be written, he made his collection available as the foundation for this work.

Many others have also contributed material or drawn upon their memories to make this history as complete as possible, and to all of them I am indeed grateful. They will find many evidences of my indebtedness to them in the pages of the book.

For professional assistance I am especially indebted to Dr. James A. Tinsley, executive director of the Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association, under whose auspices this book was written; and to Dr. Andrew Forest Muir of Rice University, who made his extensive notes and knowledge of early Houston available and who read the manuscript.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Picture section

MAPS

I. A PORT FIFTY MILES FROM THE SEA

ON A SUMMER MORNING IN 1966 THE Sam Houston, inspection boat for the Port of Houston, took aboard some one hundred passengers for an excursion down the Houston Ship Channel. Twice and sometimes three times daily since 1958 the Sam Houston had made the cruise, showing to sightseers the wonders of Houstons manmade channel. From the Turning Basin, the head of deep water and the heart of Houstons waterfront, the channel stretched some fifty miles to meet the Gulf of Mexico at Bolivar Roads. For sixteen miles the channel followed the general course of historic Buffalo Bayou to its junction with the San Jacinto River, a point where General Sam Houstons army had won Texan independence in 1836. For nine additional miles the channel followed the San Jacinto River, cutting across Morgans Point to enter Galveston Bay, thence twenty-five miles across the open bay to Bolivar Roads and the Gulf. Even before it reached the Gulf the channel made significant connections. Near Galveston Island it connected with the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, an inland barge system that served the Gulf Coast and connected with the Mississippi system. Farther up the bay it was linked by way of Clear Creek with the Manned Spacecraft Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration at Clear Lake; and by another tributary it served Bayport, an industrial park still in its early stages of development.

Although the ship channel followed the general course of natural streams, it was in fact a tribute to mans ingenuity and technical progress. The first generation of Anglo-American settlers in the area had dreamed of a channel that would bring ocean vessels across the shallow waters of Galveston Bay and inland to a point on meandering Buffalo Bayou. Later generations had inherited the dream, and late in the nineteenth century a group of practical dreamers had enlisted the assistance of the United States government. Throughout the twentieth century the United States Army Corps of Engineers had continually improved the waterway until it measured forty feet in depth for most of its length and from three to four hundred feet in width. In the same period first the City of Houston and then the Harris County Houston Ship Channel Navigation District had invested millions of dollars in Port facilities; and private interests had constructed industrial plants valued at an astronomical figure. Thus the waterway that the Sam Houstons passengers saw in 1966 bore little resemblance to that known to nineteenth-century Texans.

As the inspection boat turned downstream, a voice over the loudspeaker called attention to the Port facilities. Clustered around the Turning Basin were facilities owned by the Harris County Houston Ship Channel Navigation District, a governmental agency created under the statutes of the State of Texas and administered by a five-man Board of Navigation and Canal Commissioners. The Districts concrete wharves and warehouses lined the banks of the basin, and slightly downstream stood the public grain elevator, a facility constructed in the mid-1920s and enlarged time and again as Houston became one of the worlds leading grain ports. Somewhat farther downstream and on the south bank stood Long Reach Docks, for decades the largest private terminal on the channel but purchased by the Navigation District in late 1965. Across the stream from Long Reach were several wharves constructed by the District in the previous decade. Adjoining theseand speaking significantly of the dynamic growth of the Port of Houstonthe foundations for three additional wharves were being laid by workmen. By the 1960s these and other publicly owned Port facilitiesamong them, a bulk handling plant, a terminal railroad, and the World Trade Buildingwere yielding a profit of more than two million dollars annually.

As the Sam Houston moved downstream the voice over the speaker began pointing out the privately owned Port facilities. Four private terminals-for-hire supplemented the publicly owned facilities, and numerous private industrial wharves were scattered along the channel. In all, the Port had berthing space for almost a hundred ocean-going vessels and fifty barge docks. One hundred twenty steamship and ninety tanker lines made use of these facilities, transporting in 1965 almost sixty million tons of cargo valued at more than four billion dollars.

On both sides of the channel adjacent to the docks were large industrial plants that accounted for much of the Ports tonnage. Among these were cement factories using oyster shell from Gulf reefs; oil refineries supplied by pipelines and tankers; chemical plants feeding on petroleum by-products; steel mills utilizing scrap iron and foreign ore; and a paper mill fed by the forests of East Texas. Economists hesitated even to estimate the value of this industrial complex, but when pressed for a figure they hazarded a guess of three billion dollars.