Charles H Milby High School - Buffalo Yearbook (Houston, TX)

Page 13 text:

Settled Down to Fulfill. A Destiny . . . The intersection of Main and Texas, looking toward the bayou, in the 1850’s. Some much needed repair in the condition of the thorough- fare seems to be in progress, and not a day too soon. . . . Main Street innocent of paving in 1856, but wide and straight, with covered sidewalks to keep pedestrians out of the mud . . . . . . stages jolting to Austin, only 36 hours and four railroads converging tracks on Hous- ton . . . . . the 1876 opening of free public schools . . . . . . Sidney Porter, later famed as 0. Henry, when he was a popular columnist for the Post. . . The first Congress of the State of Texas con- vened in the fall of 1836 . . . soft breezes from the prospective Chamber of Commerce prom- ised “ample deep water to the foot of Main Street” . . . sentiment swung to Houston, and from 1836 to 1840 this building, on the present site of the Rice Hotel, housed the Capitol of Texas. 7

Page 12 text:

Sam Houston’s Namesake . . . THE PAST IS . . . . . . Captain John Richardson Harris, grandson of the founders of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, founding the city of Harrisburg, Texas, in 1826 .. . . . . March 19 to April 13, 1835, when Harrisburg was the capital of Texas ... . . . the burning of Harrisburg by Santa Anna in 1836,- and the establishment of a new town, Houston, six miles up the bayou, before Harris- burg could recover . . . . . . the Allen brothers’ real estate rocket, growing within the year from a cluster of tents to be the log-hut capital of the fledgling Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1840 .. . . . . Broadway, the route from Houston to Galves- ton and LaPorte . .. The Allen brothers’ promotional zeal displays itself in this first picture of Houston sent out to entice adventurers to the cypress and cedar of the Bayou City.

Page 14 text:

Of Firm Growth ♦ ♦ ♦ The first steamer to go up the ship channel . . . the channel which is today number two in the nation . . . REMEMBER . . . . . . a trolley ride from Harrisburg to Houston in 1906 for a nickle . .. . . . a tiny dry goods store in 1908 called Foley Brothers . . . . . . the Coca-Cola Bottling Company with horse-drawn carts to carry the cokes . . . . . . the formal opening of the Port of Houston with a twenty-five foot channel, signalled by President Woodrow Wilson’s firing of a can- non in 1916 . . . and so, the way was cleared for landlocked Houston to become an im- portant port. . . . . . patriotic fever on the eve of the great war . . . . . . vaudeville, parades, recruiting, sugarless days, and lightless nights, “Making the world safe for Democracy . . Houston’s “magnificent” Grand Central Depot on Washington Avenue, in the era of railroad building, expansion, and development, made it evident that Texas’s commerce would eventually move on rails rather than over plank roads.