Portal:Houston/Selected article/June 2007

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Allen's Landing is the birthplace of Houston, Texas. In August 1836, just months after the Republic of Texas won its independence from Mexico, two brothers (and real estate developers) from New York, John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen, purchased 6,642 acres in the area and settled there on the banks of Buffalo Bayou. Allen's Landing is at the confluence of White Oak Bayou and Buffalo Bayou and serves as a natural turning basin. A dock was quickly opened on the site, and the steamer Laura was the first ship to anchor at the landing on January 26, 1837. In 1910, the United States government approved funding for the dredging of a ship channel from the Gulf of Mexico to the present turning basin four miles to the east of Allen's Landing.