h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think this is a very good description of Houston as I've experienced it on a couple of visits. However, I don't feel a history of Houston is really complete without the, to me, amazing role of contingency in its rise to "major city" status.

Your story goes from Houston as frontier town to metropolus in one jump -- but as explained to me this transformation would never have happened if it were not for the worst natural disaster in US history (and one few people have heard of) the Galveston Hurricane.

Prior to this Houston could never have become a major city, because all the trade flowed to and through Galveston. The hurricane destroyed Galveston, killing one in six people, leveling most of the houses. Galveston never recovered, because Houston took up the trade and basically took over Galveston's previous role.

In my relatively ancient Encyclopedia Britanica (from about 1900) Houston has almost no entry, while Galveston is described as the greatest city in Texas and the entry talks about it at great length. Reading the entry (which I looked up after my visit) has a sense of great pathos... all the descriptions of the promise of the city and its ongoing works projects -- when one knows that in a few years of the entry it will be all but wiped out.

Yes, the hurricane that wiped out Galveston hit in 1900. The Houston ship channel wasn't completed until 1914. Who knows what might have been if Galveston had another 14 years worth of growth before Houston had the means to be a major competitor? Houston became what it is almost purely out of luck and hard-headedness.