Porter, Texas

Everything Porter is known for

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Music in Porter

Songs About Porter

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Artists From Porter

Sundance Head

country

Rivers & Roads in Song near Porter

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Porter.

U.S. Route 59 9 songs Interstate 45 8 songs US Route 90 9 songs Interstate 10 36 songs Trinity River 11 songs Brazos River 43 songs

Musical Heritage

An Astronaut and Two Generations of Head RoadyGoat

For a town this size, Porter's roster is absurd. Robert Crippen grew up here and went on to pilot Columbia on the first Space Shuttle flight in 1981, then commanded three more missions and ran Kennedy Space Center. That alone would carry most small towns. Porter also holds two generations of one of Texas music's odder careers. Roy Head cut Treat Her Right in 1965 and rode it to number two on the pop chart and number two rhythm and blues, beaten to the top spot only by the Beatles, then spent the seventies reinventing himself as a country singer with a couple dozen chart entries. He died here in Porter in September of 2020. His son Jason, who performs as Sundance Head, grew up around those gigs, turned chairs on The Voice, and won the eleventh season in 2016. A shuttle pilot and a father-and-son pair of hitmakers, out of a place that had four businesses in 1940.

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One High School, an Astronaut and a Slugger RoadyGoat

For a district out in the piney woods, New Caney High School has an absurd alumni list. Robert Crippen came up here and went on to pilot Columbia on the first Space Shuttle flight in 1981, then commanded three more missions and ran Kennedy Space Center. Adam Dunn came through as a quarterback and left as one of the most feared power hitters in baseball, finishing with four hundred sixty-two home runs across fourteen big-league seasons. Jason Head, who performs as Sundance Head and grew up just down the road in Porter, won the eleventh season of The Voice in 2016 — his father was Roy Head, who took Treat Her Right to number two in 1965. An astronaut, a slugger and a singer, out of a school whose first graduating class in the nineteen thirties had nine students in it. Not a bad return on a town most people only ever see from the highway.

RoadyGoat → · 3.8 mi away

History of Porter

He Made Astronaut for a Program That Never Flew RoadyGoat

The kid who grew up in Porter took the least likely road to orbit there is. Robert Crippen was born in Beaumont in 1937 and raised here, went to New Caney High School, and took an aerospace engineering degree at the University of Texas. He went to sea first, flying off the carrier USS Independence as a Navy pilot in the early sixties. Then in 1966 the Air Force picked him for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, a military space station meant to put officers in orbit with a camera. Crippen was, on paper, an astronaut. The program was cancelled in June of 1969 without ever launching a crew. He had made it and it had evaporated. NASA absorbed seven of the stranded MOL pilots that August, and Crippen waited another twelve years for a seat. On April 12, 1981, he finally got one, sitting beside commander John Young as pilot of Columbia on the first Space Shuttle flight, a brand-new machine that had never flown in space with nobody aboard to test it first. He commanded three more missions and later ran Kennedy Space Center.

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The Mill That Lost Its Apostrophe and an S RoadyGoat

The town you're rolling through almost had a different name, and a longer one. When settlers in this corner of southeast Montgomery County asked for a post office in 1892, one of the men who'd put down roots here was James Porter, who ran a sawmill cutting the piney-woods timber all around. The community wanted to call the place Porter's Mill, honoring both the man and the work that fed the settlement. The Post Office Department turned that name down, as it often did with long or possessive names, and the office opened simply as Porters, plural, with no mill and no apostrophe. For sixty-odd years the town carried that awkward extra S, a leftover plural pointing back at a single sawmill family. Finally, in 1953, the post office quietly dropped the S, and Porters became Porter, the name on the signs today. It's a small thing, one letter, but it tells you the town was named for a working sawmill and the man who ran it, not some grand founder, which fits a place that grew up around logs, rail cars, and cattle. (Source: Handbook of Texas; Porter, Texas.)

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From a Porter Living Room to the Voice Crown RoadyGoat

Porter raised a singer with soul in his blood. Jason Head, who performs as Sundance Head, was born here in Porter, and his last name is no accident in Texas music: his father was Roy Head, the blue-eyed-soul singer who scored a national Top Ten hit in 1965 with Treat Her Right. Sundance grew up around his dad's gigs and was reportedly pulled onstage to sing as a kid, then spent years grinding through Texas bands, blending country, southern soul, blues, and rock into one gravelly voice. He first reached a national audience as a semifinalist on American Idol in 2007, then bet on himself again nearly a decade later. In 2016 he turned chairs on The Voice during his blind audition, landed on Blake Shelton's team, and on December 12, 2016, won the show's eleventh season. During the finale he even sang his father's old hit, closing a circle that started in this Montgomery County town. From here, the kid whose dad sang Treat Her Right grew up to win one of the biggest singing shows in the country. (Source: Wikipedia; AllMusic.)

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New Caney

1860

Permanent settlement in what is now New Caney began in the 1860s. The area was first called Presswood for the pioneer family of Austin and Sarah (Waters) Presswood. The Presswoods came to Texas in 1862, purchased land in the area, and raised cattle on the open ranges. The family of John Wesley Robinson (1819-1903) also settled here in the 1860s and began farming, cattle raising, and cotton ginning operations. When the Houston, East and West Texas Railway line was laid through Montgomery County in the 1870s, the community became a shipping point for livestock. It then was known for many years as Caney Station, named for the dense cane brakes growing along nearby creeks. In 1882, when a post office was established, the name New Caney was adopted. Early industries in New Caney were confined chiefly to those that were necessary to carry on farming and cattle raising. As the timber industry began to flourish, however, mining props, used to support the earth along the side and roof of mining tunnels, were shipped out of New Caney. The settlement and early history of New Caney are important reminders of the rich heritage of this part of East Texas and Montgomery County. (1984)

Historical Marker →

Humble

1905

A pioneer oil boom town. Originated as crossroads community named for settler Pleasant Smith Humble (1835?-1912), who lived here before 1889, hewing his timber into railroad ties, mining gravel from his land, keeping store, and serving as justice of the peace. Neighbors included the Bender, Durdin, Isaacks, Lee, Slaughter, and Williams families. Economic bases were farms and sawmills. The post office opened 1902. In 1904 C. E. Barrett (1866-1926) drilled for oil in this area, securing small production on Moonshine Hill. On Jan. 7, 1905, he brought in the No. 2 Beaty Well which yielded 8,500 barrels a day, opening the great boom. From a village of 700, Humble grew at once into a town of 20,000. Field production-- the largest in Texas for the year 1905-- was 15,594,923 barrels of oil. The field was named for the town. A group of its operators, including Ross S. Sterling, later (1931-33) governor of Texas, in 1911 incorporated a new oil company named for the field, thus spreading into the annals of world commerce the town's name. Production from several strata here exceeded the total for fabulous Spindletop by 1946. Known as the greatest salt dome field, Humble still produces and the town for which it was named continued to thrive.

Historical Marker → · 7.5 mi away

Humble Oilfield

1902

Humble field is an oil-producing area located 1.25 miles northeast of the town of Humble in northeastern Harris County on the Upper Gulf Coast of Texas. Named for its location, the field has drawn oil and negligible amounts of gas from an anhydrite and limestone reservoir in the caprock and on the flanks of a piercement salt dome in the Eocene, Miocene, Oligocene, and Pliocene formations at depths of 580 to 5,819 feet. Along with three other highly prolific piercement salt dome fields, Spindletop (1901), Sour Lake (1901), and Batson-Old (1903), Humble helped to establish the Texas oil industry when these fields produced the first Texas Gulf Coast oil. Field development was guided by both major and independent companies and centered on the caprock from 1905 through 1913, when flank production was begun. Through continued yields from deeper horizons on the flanks, Humble field was still producing as it approached its tenth decade and as its cumulative total neared 153 million barrels of oil by 1994. The area surrounding Humble field attracted oil prospectors who searched for another Spindletop discovery and who were encouraged by gas and sulphur found in water wells and by paraffin dirt found on the surface. In the fall of 1902 George Hart spudded a well in the field on evidence of escaping gas in the area. His operation was halted by a blowout, an unexpected volume of gas under pressure, that forced the drilling equipment out of the hole. Blowouts were encountered in several wells in the part of the field later called "the hill" and drilled in the summer of 1904 by C. E. Barrett of Houston. Despite the menace of blowouts, some success was found in the early field when Higgins Oil and Fuel Company brought in a large-volume gas well half a mile southeast of the Barrett wells in October 1904. By the end of the year Humble field reported two sporadically-producing oil wells that had yielded 2,000 barrels of oil. Since none of the crude had been sold, it was stored in earthen tanks for use in the field. Even though blowouts hampered field development, their threat was minimized by the invention of a blowout preventer, which was in use by 1905 when D. R. Beatty brought in the No. 2 Fee. The well came in on January 7, 1905, and gave up the first gusher production in the field with a potential of 8,500 barrels of oil per day from a depth of 1,012 feet. Other wells were sunk into the same shallow caprock, and some showed potentials of 10,000 barrels of oil per day. At the end of the first month of flush production Humble field reported a yield of 152,653 barrels of oil, and in February operators brought 495,847 barrels to the surface. On March 3, 1905, salt water began to appear in the wells. At the end of June, after six months of gusher production, the field peaked with a monthly figure of 2,798,162 barrels of oil and immediately began its decline. Because no Texas fields were prorated before 1930, no regulations prevented operators from overproducing the field, and the first annual yield was an astounding 15,594,310 barrels of oil. Excessive overproduction in the first year extracted a toll on the field by bringing salt-water encroachment in wells, by damaging the gas cap drive of the reservoir, and by forcing Humble field crude prices as low as $.16 per barrel when millions of barrels of new oil were dumped onto the market. From 1905 through 1913 development of the field concentrated on the caprock of the salt dome, producing at depths of 1,100 to 1,200 feet. By the end of 1906, with flush production waning, the field yielded less than 3.6 million barrels of oil, and by 1907 it gave up only 2.9 million barrels, most of which was shipped to refineries by railroad tank cars. From 1907 through 1913 field production averaged 2 million barrels of oil per year, and no deeper exploration was attempted. When deep production was found on the dome flanks at Sour Lake field, operators in Humble field drilled into zones below 2,500 feet, hoping

Tsha Handbook → · 8.2 mi away

Humble, TX (Harris County)

1904

Humble is located on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad and U.S. Highway 59 eighteen miles northeast of Houston in northern Harris County, where the Big Thicket meets the coastal plain. The community serves as a retail and shipping center for an agricultural and lumbering section of the Cypress Creek valley at the center of the Humble oilfield , once the largest in Texas. Humble was a crossroads community in 1870, named for its founder, Pleasant S. Humble, a San Jacinto River ferry operator who arrived before the Civil War . Humble ran a commissary, cut railroad ties from local timber, and served as justice of the peace. Settlement in the area stopped during the Civil War but resumed after Reconstruction . In 1876 the town was a flag station on a railroad known as "the Rabbit" because passengers shot rabbits when the train stopped on the way from Houston to Shreveport. Residents pursued lumbering and agriculture, and by 1880 the population numbered ten Whites and fifty Blacks; the Blacks ran the lumbermill. Mill owner Charles Bender purchased the townsite, established a commissary where workers traded tokens for merchandise, and took over management in 1886. A post office opened that year, a school by 1887, and two hotels, two general stores, a sawmill, and a church by 1896. A local school established in 1890 had fifty pupils. In 1894 the railroad was taken over by the Houston, East and West Texas Railway. Humble became a boomtown in 1904, when oil was discovered nearby and the townsite was laid out. By the time the Lone Star Hotel was built and thirty wells were completed several months later, 10,000 people lived in the area, and by 1905 the Humble oilfield was the largest producing field in Texas. Numerous businesses were established over the next five years, including a bank, a theater, a dry-goods store, hotels, and in 1909 the Oil City News , which became the Harris County Sun in 1935. By 1906, however, production declined, the population fell to 7,500, and the community lost its original town government. Ross S. Sterling operated a feed store at Humble before he entered the oil business and founded Humble Oil and Refining Company (now Exxon Company, U.S.A. ) in 1911, but moved his headquarters to Houston in 1912. By 1914 only 3,000 residents were reported in Humble, but a second boom that year and a partial boom in 1929, when the population reached 4,000, spurred municipal development. During World War I members of the Nineteenth Infantry from Fort Sam Houston operated an army training camp at Moonshine Hill. Local residents did not immediately feel the effects of the Great Depression , but the population eventually declined to 1,500, and many farmers returned to truck farming and dairying. After defeating a proposal to incorporate in 1929, a new city charter was obtained on August 28, 1933, and the town incorporated. Oil production in World War II brought an influx of workers that increased the population from 1,371 in 1940 to 2,600 by the 1960s. The Eastex Freeway (U.S. Highway 59) from Houston to Humble was completed by 1970, when efforts to restore the downtown area were made, and a library, a city hall, a community hall, a park, and a historical museum were completed or under construction. Proximity to Houston Intercontinental Airport and Lake Houston attracted new residents to Humble and gave rise to fourteen new subdivisions and other summer-home construction. Workers commuted to Houston or were employed at Utex Industries, a metal manufacturer, which operated nearby. In 1990 the population was 12,060. In the 1990s Old Humble, east of the railroad tracks and south of Farm Road 1960, was populated by artists and antique dealers. By 2000 the population reached 14,579.

Tsha Handbook → · 8.2 mi away

Hightower, Verna Lee Booker [Boots]

1930

Verna Lee Hightower, rodeo competitor, the first African American to become an official member of the Girl's Rodeo Association, and civil rights activist, was born on June 26, 1930, in Spring, Texas, near Houston, to Arthur Booker and Alvirita (Wells) Booker. At an early age, Verna developed a love for the outdoors and horses, so much so that she earned a nickname of "Boots." After Verna's parents divorced, her mother moved the family to Houston. When Verna Lee Booker married Ted Hightower (date unknown), she began to train and ride more regularly. She devoted most of her time to and excelled at barrel racing. In 1949 the Hightowers purchased their first home which was located near the Diamond L Ranch, a rodeo arena on South Main in Houston. The arena, built by Black cowboy J. L. Sweeney, served as a venue where African-American cowboys and cowgirls came to compete. Verna Hightower gained early exposure and success in competitions at the Diamond L Ranch rodeos. She competed on the national level on the Black rodeo circuit in Okmulgee and Henrietta, Oklahoma, and Simonton and Pasadena, Texas, where she was very successful. Soon she became the "poster girl" for area rodeos. Aside from rodeo, the Hightowers were the parents of six children-Lewis, Alvirita, Gilbert, Gerald, Christine, and Dee Dee-all of whom were involved in the family business of rodeo. They were taught a "healthy respect for riding and ranch animals." Dee Dee, one of the younger daughters, died at an early age. Verna's family was well-known as the first African-American family listed as "trainers" and "owners" of livestock presented at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. In 1969 Hightower became the first African-American woman to take part in the barrel racing competition in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. She was also a member of the National Colored Rodeo Association and the Southwest Rodeo Association, Inc., as well as the Girl's Rodeo Association (now the Women's Professional Rodeo Association ). Verna and her family were members of St. Stephens Missionary Baptist Church in Houston. She was an accomplished pianist, as well as an advocate for civil rights. In 1963 Verna and Ted Hightower filed a successful lawsuit against the Houston Independent School District to allow their children to attend the White schools that were closer to their home instead of the Black schools across town. Verna also worked as a medical assistant at the Lyons Medical Clinic in the Fifth Ward in Houston. Verna Lee Booker Hightower died on August 27, 1970, in Harris County. In 2007 she was inducted into the National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum Hall of Fame in Fort Worth.

Tsha Handbook → · 9.6 mi away

Moonshine Hill

1887

Early reports of natural gas seepages in this area were not uncommon in the late 19th century. James Slaughter noticed such natural occurences near the San Jacinto River in 1887. Several years later, with S. A. Hart, he set up a drilling operation in the area, but it proved unsuccessful. Charles Barrett, a former Huston merchant, also drilled wells here, but found the results limited. In 1904, the Higgins Oil Company brought in a major gas well and the following year, the first successful oil well was drilled. This area, known as the Moonshine Hill section of the great Humble oil field, became the site of a boom town. Within months of the 1905 discovery, the population of the Moonshine Hill settlement increased to 10,000. Early operations associated with the site included the Moonshine Oil Company of Walter Sharp, Ed Prather, and Howard R. Hughes. Although tents comprised most of the early structures, Moonshine Hill eventually included a church, school, postal station, stores, hotels, and saloons. Despite three separate boom eras, the last occurring in 1929, Moonshine Hill declined as a community. Its brief existence, however, had a dramatic impact on the economic development of Humble and Houston. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Historical Marker → · 7.1 mi away

Things to Do in Porter

food 24.0 mi away

Goodson's Cafe

Tomball cafe on State Highway 249, north of Houston. Ella Goodson took over the place in 1954, and the chicken-fried steak here has been called the best in…

quirky 22.2 mi away

Virgin Mary Oak Tree

An oak tree in the Garden Oaks neighborhood where passersby report seeing the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the bark and leave flowers and religious…

Everything Near Porter

531 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

He Made Astronaut for a Program That Never Flew
The kid who grew up in Porter took the least likely road to orbit there is. Robert Crippen was born in Beaumont in 1937 and raised here, went to New Caney High School, and took an aerospace engineering degree at the…
The Mill That Lost Its Apostrophe and an S
The town you're rolling through almost had a different name, and a longer one. When settlers in this corner of southeast Montgomery County asked for a post office in 1892, one of the men who'd put down roots here was…
From a Porter Living Room to the Voice Crown
Porter raised a singer with soul in his blood. Jason Head, who performs as Sundance Head, was born here in Porter, and his last name is no accident in Texas music: his father was Roy Head, the blue-eyed-soul singer who…
When the San Jacinto Took the Houses Away
In late August 2017, the same rivers that make this area green turned on it. Hurricane Harvey stalled over Southeast Texas and dumped historic rain, and Porter sat in one of the worst spots for it, low ground near the…
The Wrong Man Did Ten Years for It
Before the Deanna Ogg case was solved, it produced one of the most cited wrongful convictions in Texas. Roy Criner, a logger working in this part of Montgomery County, was convicted in 1990 of aggravated sexual assault…
A Hundred People, Then a Hundred Businesses
Porter has been swallowed, and the numbers show how fast. Around 1914 this was a settlement of roughly a hundred and fifty people with two general stores and a lumber company. By 1940 it had gotten smaller, not bigger:…
The Half-Mile-Wide One Came Through Porter Heights
A little after noon on December 28, 2024, a tornado dropped out of a December storm system and went to work on this area. It stayed on the ground roughly ten and a half miles, tracking from the Porter Heights area…
An Astronaut and Two Generations of Head
For a town this size, Porter's roster is absurd. Robert Crippen grew up here and went on to pilot Columbia on the first Space Shuttle flight in 1981, then commanded three more missions and ran Kennedy Space Center. That…
Porter, TX
The growth around Porter, Texas, has been something to behold these last few years. It's not just the subdivisions sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain, which is saying something considering how humid it gets out…
Nine Volunteers and One Truck
The department that covers this ground started in February of 1962 as a volunteer outfit, and there is a photograph from that year of the whole thing: nine men standing in front of their fire truck. That was the fire…
The Bald Eagle Shot Out of a Porter Tree
On October 11, 2024, somebody in Porter shot a bald eagle out of a tree, and the thing that made the case was video. Investigators had footage of the bird being hit and tumbling down, and when they went looking they…
They Cut Through the Back Wall to Get Them Out
The luckiest thing about the Porter store collapse is who happened to be driving by. A little after eleven in the morning on July 22, 2026, the front facade of a gas station and convenience store at FM 1314 and Lazy…

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Porter's Voice Winner Survived His Own Holster
Porter's best-known singer nearly lost it all to a holster. Sundance Head, who won the eleventh season of The Voice and grew up around here as the son of soul singer Roy Head, was putting a pistol away at his ranch in…
East Montgomery County Finally Gets Its H-E-B
If you want one measure of whether a Texas suburb has truly arrived, it is whether H-E-B has decided you are worth a store. This area is about to find out. The grocer is building H-E-B Valley Ranch on North Grand…
The Railroad They Called the Rabbit
The reason a town grew here at all was a famously rickety little railroad. The Houston, East and West Texas Railway, chartered in 1875, pushed a narrow-gauge line northeast out of Houston, had twenty miles of track down…
The Pit BBQ Across From the High School
If you want barbecue right in the middle of everyday Porter, The Pit BBQ at 22776 FM 1314 is parked exactly where the town actually moves, across the road from Porter High School. It's a family-run smokehouse on the…
A Body on the Shoulder of U.S. 59
On May 7, 2026, a man was found dead alongside U.S. 59 in this corridor, and the first question was whether anyone would ever know what happened to him. Splendora police called in Montgomery County sheriff's detectives…
New Caney · 2.6 mi · Historical Marker
Permanent settlement in what is now New Caney began in the 1860s. The area was first called Presswood for the pioneer family of Austin and Sarah (Waters) Presswood. The Presswoods came to Texas in 1862, purchased land…
The Marker That Tells the Whole Story · 2.7 mi
If you want a single physical spot that sums up everything about this town, pull over at the New Caney historical marker at 21130 U.S. 59. In a few paragraphs of cast metal, it lays out the arc of the place: the…
The Brewery in the Old Church · 3.3 mi
There's a brewery in Porter that took over a house of worship and leaned all the way into it. Back Pew Brewing opened in March 2016 at 26452 Sorters McClellan Road, inside an old church building, and it built its whole…
A New Caney Grad Flew the First Space Shuttle · 3.8 mi
Few small Texas communities can say a local kid piloted humanity's first reusable spacecraft, but New Caney can. Astronaut Robert L. Crippen grew up in the Porter–New Caney area and graduated from New Caney High School…
New Caney, TX · 3.8 mi
New Caney is a place that's always seemed to be on the cusp of something. For years, it was just a stretch of Highway 59 dotted with small businesses, the kind of town you drove through on the way to somewhere else. But…
Kingwood, TX · 3.8 mi
Kingwood is known as the "Livable Forest," and for good reason. The towering loblolly pines that surround the neighborhoods give it a sense of peace that's hard to find so close to Houston. It’s a place where you might…
One High School, an Astronaut and a Slugger · 3.8 mi
For a district out in the piney woods, New Caney High School has an absurd alumni list. Robert Crippen came up here and went on to pilot Columbia on the first Space Shuttle flight in 1981, then commanded three more…
The Quarterback Who Quit and Hit 462 Home Runs · 3.8 mi
Adam Dunn left New Caney High School as a quarterback, and for a while that looked like the plan. He went to Texas to play football, redshirted, and opened a season listed third on the depth chart. Then he ran into the…
The Cold Case That Helped Rewrite Forensic Science · 3.8 mi
This area carries one of the most consequential forensic stories in Texas, and it should be told carefully. On September 27, 1986, 16-year-old Deanna Ogg, a New Caney High School student, disappeared after being seen…
The Town With Three Names · 3.8 mi
The stretch of road you're on belongs to a community that has worn three different names. Permanent settlement began during the Civil War era when Austin and Sarah Waters Presswood arrived in 1862, and the place was…
New Caney Pine Held Up Mines Far Away · 3.8 mi
When the railroad arrived, it turned this little place into a timber-shipping point, and the scale is surprising. By 1884 the community counted only about 60 residents, yet it supported four steam sawmills along with a…
Logging Railroads That Became Wilderness Trails · 3.8 mi
Inside Lake Houston Wilderness Park, you can literally walk the remnants of New Caney's timber era. Temporary rail lines once threaded through what was then working forestland, hauling cut logs out to the mills, and…
The Rosary That Went to Federal Court · 3.8 mi
New Caney's school district once landed in a federal courtroom over a string of rosary beads. In the case known as Chalifoux v. New Caney Independent School District, students challenged a school policy that treated…
The Fair and Rodeo at Bull Sallas Park · 3.8 mi
Each year the grounds at Bull Sallas Park fill up for one of East Montgomery County's most durable traditions, the East Montgomery County Fair and Rodeo. Established in 1985, it brings together livestock exhibitions,…
1,500 Practice Landings for a Glider With No Engines · 3.8 mi
Before New Caney's own Robert Crippen could pilot the first Space Shuttle, he had to train for a machine that came home as a heavy, unpowered glider. Because Columbia couldn't fire its engines and circle around for a…
A House Built From Its Own Land · 3.8 mi
Near where U.S. 59 meets Loop 494 and Reinhardt Road sits the Reinhardt Homestead, a place that shows what came after the sawmills moved on. Conrad Reinhardt bought the property in 1918, and the bungalow-style house…
More Than 170 Graves Back to 1867 · 3.8 mi
Tucked into the New Caney area is Vick Cemetery, a historic burial ground holding more than 170 known graves, with documented burials reaching all the way back to 1867. That date is no accident: it places the cemetery's…
The Burger Stand That Outlasted the Chains · 3.8 mi
Along the Loop 494 corridor where Porter, New Caney, and Kingwood blur together, Pete's Burger Place has been flipping patties since 2005. It's family-owned and independent, the kind of traditional burger stand that…
Breakfast and Lunch, New Caney Proper · 3.8 mi
For a bite that sits squarely inside New Caney proper rather than out in the blended Loop 494 corridor, Fat Boy's Restaurant at 22598 Community Drive is the local call. It's an independent breakfast-and-lunch diner, the…
Reinhardt Homestead · 4.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Reinhardt Homestead, established in 1918 by Conrad Reinhardt. He and his wife Lillie Bell raised their family right here, living on the property until their deaths. The house you see, built…
Lake Houston · 4.4 mi
Eighteen miles northeast of downtown, the San Jacinto River fans out into the broad sheet of water that quenches a big chunk of Houston's thirst. The city itself built this one: crews broke ground in late 1951, finished…
Kingwood: The Suburb Built by an Oil Giant and the King Ranch · 4.6 mi
You're in Kingwood, the 'Livable Forest,' a master-planned community in northeast Houston founded in 1970, with its first residential village opening in 1971. It was a joint venture between two Texas giants: Friendswood…
The City in the Woods · 6.0 mi
The deep forest all around you in Woodbranch is not an accident, and it is not a coincidence either — the trees are where the name came from. In the 1960s developers laid out a residential subdivision in these woods…
Woodbranch, TX · 6.0 mi
Every town has its heroes, but you won't find any household names connected to Woodbranch. As a small, relatively young residential community founded in the 1960s, it hasn't been the hometown of any major celebrities,…
Porter Heights, TX · 6.5 mi
Farm to Market Road 1314 forms the northeastern boundary of Porter Heights and connects the community to the Grand Parkway, the outermost beltway around Houston. This road is a key transportation artery for the area.
The River and The Rain · 6.7 mi
In August 2017, Roman Forest became a case study in hydrology. When Hurricane Harvey stalled over Southeast Texas, it wasn't the wind that posed the main threat here, but the water. The storm dropped thirty to forty…
A Marine's Promise and the Bridge Home to Splendora · 6.7 mi
The State Highway Two Forty Two bridge over Interstate Sixty Nine in Montgomery County is the Lance Corporal Armando Hernandez Memorial Bridge, and it stands for a promise. Armando Hernandez graduated from Splendora…
All Roads Lead to Roman Forest · 6.7 mi
As you navigate Roman Forest, you might feel like you need a history book instead of a GPS. You'll pass Parthenon Place, Colosseum Court, Caesars Circle and Appian Way, and out on Roman Forest Boulevard there are actual…
East Fork of the San Jacinto River · 6.8 mi
The East Fork of the San Jacinto River runs sixty-nine miles southeast out of the piney woods near Dodge, in Walker County, down to Lake Houston, where it meets the West Fork. The San Jacinto name honors Saint Hyacinth,…
West Fork of the San Jacinto River · 6.8 mi
The West Fork of the San Jacinto River is the long arm of the system — ninety miles of water sliding southeast out of the Walker County woods near Huntsville down to the northern rim of Lake Houston, where it meets the…
Moonshine Hill: The Tent City That Out-Pumped Texas · 6.9 mi
Two miles east of downtown Humble was one of the wildest boomtowns in Texas. Gas seepages were noticed as early as 1887; Houston retailer Charles F. Barrett leased Moonshine Hill in 1903 and struck oil in May 1904.…
Cypress Creek · 6.9 mi
Cypress Creek is the big one up north — about 49 miles of water curving northeast from Waller County across the top of Harris County to join Spring Creek near Humble. It was almost certainly named for the bald cypress…
East Fork of the San Jacinto River · 6.9 mi
The East Fork of the San Jacinto River runs sixty-nine miles southeast out of the piney woods near Dodge, in Walker County, down to Lake Houston, where it meets the West Fork. The San Jacinto name honors Saint Hyacinth,…
FM 1960: The Road That Was Never a Year · 7.0 mi
Here is a road whose name fools almost everyone: the "1960" in FM 1960 is not a year. It is a Farm-to-Market route number. The Texas Highway Department designated FM 1960 on May 23, 1951, under Minute Order 030242,…
Appian Way Runs Through the Piney Woods · 7.0 mi
Here is the twist: the city is named for its forest, not for Rome, yet the developers leaned into the accidental pun anyway. Drivers turning off Interstate 69 onto Roman Forest Boulevard pass tall, Roman-style pillars…
The Forest That Named a City · 7.0 mi
Roman Forest sits in far eastern Montgomery County, roughly 32 miles northeast of Houston and 23 miles southeast of Conroe, tucked east of U.S. 59 and near the East Fork of the San Jacinto River. It began the way many…
Moonshine Hill · 7.1 mi · Historical Marker
Early reports of natural gas seepages in this area were not uncommon in the late 19th century. James Slaughter noticed such natural occurences near the San Jacinto River in 1887. Several years later, with S. A. Hart, he…
Huffman-Cleveland Road: The Connector Named for Two Men · 7.1 mi
Huffman-Cleveland Road is a county-maintained link in northeastern Harris County, and its name is really the names of two men. The southern end sits in Huffman, the community first settled in 1839 by David Huffman, a…
When the River Claimed the Town · 7.2 mi
Imagine your town going under. For the people of Patton Village, it's a living memory. In August 2017 Hurricane Harvey stalled over Southeast Texas, and out here -- where Peach Creek runs down toward the East Fork of…
The 'Speed Trap' on Highway 59 · 7.2 mi
For a long time, if you mentioned Patton Village to an outsider, they'd give you two words: speed trap. This small town built a big reputation on aggressive enforcement along U.S. 59, and the numbers were not subtle --…
Lambrecht's Artesian Well · 7.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of a surprising discovery in Humble. In 1912, this spot was drilled for oil, but instead of striking black gold, they hit free-flowing artesian water. German immigrant Nick Lambrecht, who'd…
The Rabbit's Last Stop · 7.4 mi
On a December night in nineteen-twenty-two, around ten o'clock, the Houston East and West Texas passenger train — the line everybody called 'the Rabbit' — came into Humble and sideswiped a switch engine sitting on the…
The Speed Trap That Sparked a 12-Day Hunger Strike · 7.4 mi
In 1971 Patton Village annexed a strip of U.S. Highway 59, the busy Eastex Freeway now signed as Interstate 69, and turned traffic enforcement into a business. It deployed unmarked cars and radar, and at its peak the…
The Firefighter Who Built a Town and Named It for Himself · 7.4 mi
Patton Village wears its founder's name for a reason. H.L. "Pat" Patton was born in Splendora, just south of here, and from about 1931 to 1950 he was one of the country's top oil-well blowout and fire specialists, the…
The Stinger: How This Town's Founder Capped Burning Oil Wells · 7.4 mi
Before he built this town, H.L. Patton solved one of the hardest problems in early oil work: how to cap a well spewing gas and oil under enormous pressure, often on fire. His signature answer was a device he called the…
The Sawmill Baron Whose Name Outlived the Timber · 7.4 mi
Before oil, Humble was a lumber town, and the lumber was Charles Bender's. A German immigrant apprenticed to be a banker, Bender sailed to America at 15, worked banking in New York, ran bakeries in Missouri, and lost…
Williams Bayou · 7.4 mi
Locals know this one by two names — Williams Bayou on the maps, Williams Gully if you grew up nearby. It rises about three miles east of Humble and runs southwest for roughly four and a half miles before joining Garners…
Humble, TX · 7.5 mi
First things first: it is pronounced Umble, silent H, because that is how Pleasant Smith Humble said his own name. Plez Humble ran a ferry across the San Jacinto River, cut railroad ties, kept a store, and settled small…
The Feed-Store Oil Company That Became Exxon · 7.5 mi
One of the largest corporations on earth is named after downtown Humble. Ross S. Sterling ran a feed store here during the oil boom before moving into oil itself. Humble Oil Company was chartered in February 1911 with…
The Gusher that Built a Boomtown · 7.5 mi
Imagine this spot in 1904. It wasn't a city; it was a quiet lumber and farming community. C. E. Barrett drilled here that summer and got blowouts instead of a well. Then, on January 7, 1905, D. R. Beatty's No. 2 Fee…
Humble · 7.5 mi · Historical Marker
A pioneer oil boom town. Originated as crossroads community named for settler Pleasant Smith Humble (1835?-1912), who lived here before 1889, hewing his timber into railroad ties, mining gravel from his land, keeping…
The Company That Carried the Town's Name · 7.5 mi
The oil boom of 1904 brought chaos and wildcatters, but it also brought entrepreneurs with a vision. In 1911, a group of them, including brothers Ross and Frank Sterling and their partner Walter Fondren, decided to…
The River's Revenge: Hurricane Harvey · 7.5 mi
The West Fork of the San Jacinto River usually flows peacefully by, a scenic backdrop to the city. But in August 2017, it became a force of destruction. When Hurricane Harvey stalled over the Houston area, it dumped an…
Christian Life Center Academy, Humble (DeAndre Jordan) · 7.5 mi
Christian Life Center Academy in Humble, Texas is where DeAndre Jordan had a dominant senior season — about 26 points, 15 rebounds, and 8 blocks a game, once swatting 20 shots in a single game. He played one year at…
Good Oil Days: Humble Throws a Party for Its Oil Boom · 7.5 mi
You're in downtown Humble, home of Good Oil Days, the Main Street festival that celebrates the oil boom that built this town. When oil gushed in here in 1905, Humble briefly out-produced every field in Texas, and the…
Humble Lodge No. 979, A.F. & A.M. · 7.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Humble, Texas, a town that owes some of its early civic spirit to a group of Masons. Back around the turn of the century, local Masons had to travel to neighboring towns for their meetings. That…
Chicken-Fried Steak in a 1914 Oil-Boom Storefront · 7.5 mi
Humble City Cafe occupies the Pangburn Building, built in 1914 on Main Street while Humble was still riding its oilfield economy. Building owner Tom Ott has held the Pangburn Building since December 1970 and opened the…
First United Methodist Church of Humble · 7.5 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Humble, a town that exploded with oil in the early 1900s. Right around 1907, when the oil boom was in full swing, a preacher named J. T. Browning started holding Methodist services here. Can you…
San Jacinto River · 7.6 mi
This quiet brown river east of Houston punches way above its weight in history. The main stem is short, only about 28 miles from the dam below Lake Houston down to Galveston Bay, but down near its mouth, on April 21,…
Luce Bayou · 7.6 mi
Luce Bayou carries one of the more haunting names on the map: the Handbook of Texas says it was named for a runaway slave — no name recorded, no story preserved, just the bayou keeping the memory of someone who ran for…
Humble Cemetery · 7.7 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past what's believed to be the oldest cemetery in Humble. The earliest marked grave here belongs to Joseph Dunman, who died way back in 1879. And listen to this: Jane Elizabeth Humble, wife of the town's…
Atascocita, TX · 7.8 mi
Atascocita wears one of the oldest names in Harris County, and it is Spanish for getting stuck. Back in the 1750s, Spain cut a military road from San Antonio toward Louisiana, and it passed an outpost called Atascosito,…
The 'Boggy' Road Spain Built to Stop Smugglers · 7.8 mi
Atascocita is named for a road, and the road is older than the United States. The Atascosito Road was established by the Spanish before 1757 as a military highway into East Texas, taking its name from Atascosito, a…
The River With No Off Switch · 7.8 mi
Just east of Roman Forest runs the East Fork of the San Jacinto River, and a key hydrology fact shapes life here: unlike the West Fork, which is buffered by Lake Conroe, the East Fork has no dam. The San Jacinto River…
The Call at Highway Two Forty Two · 7.8 mi
State Highway Two Forty Two, from Interstate Sixty Nine to Farm to Market Road Fourteen Eighty Five, is the Sergeant Stacey Baumgartner Memorial Highway. Stacey Baumgartner had served with the Patton Village Police…
Humble Westfield Road: Oil Town to West's Field · 7.9 mi
Humble Westfield Road is another northeast Harris County destination road, its name a straight line drawn between its two endpoints. It tied the oil town of Humble to the railroad community of Westfield to the west.…
Seal McDougle Cemetery · 8.0 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Seal McDougle Cemetery, established in 1883. It was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2005.
Atascocita: The Golf Course That Came Before the Suburb · 8.1 mi
You're in Atascocita, where the golf course is older than the suburb around it. In 1957, a syndicate of Houston businessmen including landowners W.M. Wheless and J.S. Abercrombie opened the Atascocita Country Club on…
Humble Oilfield · 8.2 mi · Tsha Handbook
Humble field is an oil-producing area located 1.25 miles northeast of the town of Humble in northeastern Harris County on the Upper Gulf Coast of Texas. Named for its location, the field has drawn oil and negligible…
Humble, TX (Harris County) · 8.2 mi · Tsha Handbook
Humble is located on the Texas and New Orleans Railroad and U.S. Highway 59 eighteen miles northeast of Houston in northern Harris County, where the Big Thicket meets the coastal plain. The community serves as a retail…
The Town Named for Getting Stuck in the Mud · 8.2 mi
The name on every sign around here is a Spanish joke about bad roads. Atascocita traces back to the Spanish word atascadero, which means a bog or mire, the kind of soft, sucking ground where a cart sinks to its axles.…
The Bay-Sized Lake That Made Atascocita a Water Town · 8.2 mi
Drive far enough east in Atascocita and the suburb runs straight into open water. That is Lake Houston, the broad reservoir the City of Houston created in 1953 by damming the San Jacinto River, with the lake filling…
From Oil-Company Land to One of America's Fastest-Growing Suburbs · 8.2 mi
The neighborhoods spreading out around you are almost all younger than the people living in them. For most of the twentieth century this was rural land that the Humble Oil and Refining Company held for oil and gas,…
The Suburb Where Alligators Share the Subdivision Lake · 8.2 mi
Here is a fact that surprises new arrivals scrolling through lakefront listings: the same Lake Houston that anchors Atascocita's marinas and back patios is genuine alligator country. American alligators live throughout…
Morris, Robert Buckner · 8.2 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Harris County, not far from Houston, and right here is where Robert Buckner Morris spent over twenty years chasing a dream. He was convinced there was oil buried deep beneath the Humble salt dome,…
From a Snow-Cone Shack to a Crawfish Institution · 8.2 mi
If you want to eat something with actual Atascocita roots, point the car toward That One Place at 3333 Atascocita Road. It started small, opening in 2012 as a roadside Nola-style sno ball stand selling shaved-ice snow…
Williams Bayou · 8.4 mi
Locals know this one by two names — Williams Bayou on the maps, Williams Gully if you grew up nearby. It rises about three miles east of Humble and runs southwest for roughly four and a half miles before joining Garners…
Will Clayton Parkway: The Cotton Trader Who Helped Rebuild Europe · 8.6 mi
Will Clayton Parkway, the busy approach on the east side of George Bush Intercontinental Airport, honors William Lockhart Clayton (1880 to 1966). In 1904 Clayton went into the cotton business with his brother-in-law…
A Deputy Constable Driving Home With Dinner · 8.7 mi
The Deputy Constable Omar Ursin Memorial Highway follows Farm to Market Road Nineteen Sixty in Harris County, from Woodland Hills Drive to the Liberty County line. Omar Ursin was a deputy with the Harris County Precinct…
Cox's Switch: The Technology That Built a Town · 9.2 mi
Before it was Splendora, this place was called 'Cox's Switch,' and that name tells you everything about the piece of technology that created this town. As you look at the railroad tracks that still run through the heart…
The High School That Started Sending Eagles to the NFL · 9.2 mi
Atascocita High School only opened in August 2006, but it built a football program fast enough to start feeding the pros within a generation. The breakthrough name is Sam Cosmi, an offensive lineman who starred for the…
A Star in the Window, a Marker by the Road · 9.2 mi
This road carries a Blue Star Memorial Highway designation, one of a string of them across Texas. The name comes from a family tradition. When someone in a household was serving in the armed forces, the family displayed…
Hightower, Verna Lee Booker [Boots] · 9.6 mi · Tsha Handbook
Verna Lee Hightower, rodeo competitor, the first African American to become an official member of the Girl's Rodeo Association, and civil rights activist, was born on June 26, 1930, in Spring, Texas, near Houston, to…
Spring, TX · 9.6 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving north of Houston, right through Spring. This community started in 1838 when William Pierpont set up a trading post on Spring Creek. By 1840, it was a small farming town, but things really took off in 1871…
Splendora, TX · 9.6 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Splendora, Texas, a town with a name as pretty as its origins. Back in the late 1800s, this place was just called Cox's Switch. But in 1896, the man who helped bring the railroad here, Charles…
The Crosstie Camp They Named for Wildflowers · 9.9 mi
This stretch of US-59 was a raw railroad clearing before it was a town. In the late 1880s, a man named Charles Cox talked the Houston, East and West Texas Railway into running a narrow-gauge spur up from Houston to haul…
The Sculptor Who Carved the Big Thicket · 9.9 mi
Around 1977, one of the most important Texas sculptors of his generation pulled off the highway and made a home in these woods. James Surls and his wife, the artist Charmaine Locke, moved to Splendora and stayed roughly…
The Day an EF-3 Tore Across the County · 9.9 mi
The piney woods that give this area its beauty also leave it wide open to violent weather, and on December 28, 2024, that came home hard. A little after noon, a tornado dropped out of a severe storm system and stayed on…
Three to Ten Cents a Tie · 9.9 mi
The whole reason a town grew here was the timber, and the work was brutal and cheap. Once the railroad spur reached Cox's Switch, the surrounding piney woods turned into a payroll: men logged, farmed, worked the…
The Schoolhouse Charles Cox Built · 9.9 mi
Charles Cox gave Splendora its railroad and its name, and then he gave it a school. The first house of worship went up around 1895 near where the cemetery is now, and Green Leaf Missionary Baptist Church organized in…
Splendora, TX · 9.9 mi
In the late 1800s, the Houston, East and West Texas Railway, now the Union Pacific Railroad, decided to build a narrow-gauge spur at the location of what is now Splendora, originally known as 'Cox's Switch.' The area…
Splendora Cafe & BBQ · 9.9 mi
If you want to eat where the town actually eats, Splendora Cafe & BBQ at 23085 Speed Street is the local pick. It's a family-owned barbecue joint that has been smoking meat in Splendora since 2004, which by small-town…
Old Humble Road: The Older Way to the Oil Town · 10.0 mi
Old Humble Road carries the name of the town it runs to, and that town carries the name of a man. Humble grew up around a San Jacinto River crossing run by Pleasant Smith Humble, known as Plez, who reached the area…
Cypress Creek · 10.0 mi
Cypress Creek is the big one up north — about 49 miles of water curving northeast from Waller County across the top of Harris County to join Spring Creek near Humble. It was almost certainly named for the bald cypress…
Huffman, TX · 10.1 mi
Huffman, Texas, isn't quite like its neighbors. It's never been a major agricultural hub like Crosby, despite the fertile soil along the San Jacinto River. And unlike Humble, it didn't explode with the oil boom, though…
Luce Bayou · 10.2 mi
Luce Bayou carries one of the more haunting names on the map: the Handbook of Texas says it was named for a runaway slave — no name recorded, no story preserved, just the bayou keeping the memory of someone who ran for…
A State Discus Record and a Retired Number 40 · 10.3 mi
The high school in this little town turned out a genuine NFL fixture. Brian Robison grew up in Splendora and starred at Splendora High School, where he earned all-state honors in two sports at once. On the field he was…
Huffman: Paid in Land for a Revolution, a Century Before the Lake · 10.4 mi
You're in Huffman, one of the oldest communities in northeast Harris County. Its founder, Louisiana native David Huffman, fought in the Texas Revolution, and in 1838 the young Republic paid him twenty-four dollars and…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Grand Oaks (Spring) · 10.5 mi
Grand Oaks (Spring, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Owen Eastwood (0.469 avg); Andrew Clayton (4 HR).
Williams Bayou · 10.5 mi
Locals know this one by two names — Williams Bayou on the maps, Williams Gully if you grew up nearby. It rises about three miles east of Humble and runs southwest for roughly four and a half miles before joining Garners…
Jetero Boulevard: A Typo That Named an Airport · 10.6 mi
Jetero Boulevard is a short surviving stub deep in the cargo zone of George Bush Intercontinental Airport, and the name is a leftover from one of the strangest chapters in Houston aviation history. In 1957, before there…
Spring Cemetery · 11.1 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the historic Spring Cemetery, a quiet reminder of this town's past. Spring boomed in 1873 as a vital railroad center on the International and Great Northern line. Early landowners, the Sellers…
The City Built in a Decade · 11.2 mi
Turn off the main road and drive east and you enter a different world, a grid of streets that just keeps going. This is Colony Ridge and its sister subdivisions, one of the fastest-growing developments in the nation.…
Engineering a City in a Floodplain · 11.2 mi
Building a city is an engineering problem. Building one this fast, on this scale, on a flat coastal plain that floods is a different order of problem. The country around Plum Grove takes more than fifty inches of rain a…
Plum Grove, TX · 11.2 mi
As you drive through Plum Grove, you might wonder about its simple, pleasant name. Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. When the first Anglo settlers arrived here in the mid-1800s, this part of the Big Thicket was…
Haunted Old Town Spring · 11.3 mi
Old Town Spring, north of Houston, was a roaring railroad town in the early nineteen-hundreds — the International-Great Northern made it a junction with a roundhouse and a fourteen-track switchyard, drawing some two…
When Groundwater Finds Daylight · 11.3 mi
A natural spring forms where groundwater reaches the land surface and discharges on its own. Rain infiltrates soil and rock, fills an aquifer, and moves from higher hydraulic pressure toward an opening such as a valley,…
Where Spring Creek Goes · 11.3 mi
Spring Creek drains a watershed stretching across parts of Grimes, Waller, Montgomery, and Harris counties. Near the eastern end of its course, the creek joins the West Fork of the San Jacinto River. That water…
The Floodplain Bargain · 11.3 mi
Floodplains tempt settlement for the same reasons they create danger. They are flat, often fertile, close to water, and easier to travel across than uplands. Along Spring Creek, undeveloped floodplain also supports…
Rain, Aquifers, and Vanishing Springs · 11.3 mi
Rainfall supports creeks in two ways. Storm runoff reaches channels quickly, while some water soaks downward and recharges aquifers. Groundwater can return gradually through springs and seepage, sustaining flow between…
The County That Lasted a Year · 11.3 mi
Spring Creek briefly lent its name to an entire county of the Republic of Texas. Lawmakers established Spring Creek County for judicial and other purposes on January twenty first, eighteen forty one. It covered pieces…
How Spring Got Its Name · 11.3 mi
Spring has more than one name story. The community clearly developed near Spring Creek, making the creek an obvious source. Another often-repeated tradition says railroad workers reached the area during a beautiful…
Spring, TX · 11.3 mi
Spring, Texas, might seem like just another suburb north of Houston, but it's got a pulse all its own, and a surprising number of folks who've gone on to do big things. You might not know that Simone Biles, the most…
Spring Shipped Potatoes to the East Coast by the Boxcar · 11.3 mi
Before Spring was a suburb it was a produce town, and the museum's record puts a date on the start of it. In eighteen ninety nine, working with the railroad, the station agent R. L. Robinson shipped the first boxcar…
Spring, Creek, Bayou, River · 11.3 mi
Spring, creek, stream, bayou, and river describe related but different things. A spring is groundwater emerging at the surface. Creek and stream are flexible names for flowing channels, usually smaller than what locals…
Why Settlements Followed Creeks · 11.3 mi
Creeks pulled early settlement toward them because they concentrated necessities in one corridor. Water served people and livestock. Bottomland supplied timber, game, fish, and fertile soil. A dependable crossing…
Why This Creek Runs Brown · 11.3 mi
Southeastern Texas creeks often look muddy and move slowly because they cross a young, flat coastal plain rather than steep, rocky country. The low gradient reduces the speed that would otherwise expose bedrock and…
Old Town Spring Came Back Because of Hamburgers · 11.3 mi
Towns that come back usually come back because somebody wrote a plan. The local account of how this district came back is better than that. By the fifties and sixties the old commercial strip here was in trouble.…
The Broke Little Town With an International Flower Business · 11.3 mi
Here is a fact about Spring in the nineteen thirties that does not fit the picture you would build from everything else. The Handbook of Texas lists among the town's noted businesses of that era the A. F. Russell Day…
The Mill That Shredded Palmetto Leaves · 11.3 mi
Spring supported a run of sawmills and lumber businesses, and one of them made something stranger than lumber. Bayer's Excelsior Mill opened in nineteen twenty seven. Excelsior is a product almost nobody names anymore…
Boomtown, Ghost Town, Shopping Village: Spring's Railroad Whiplash · 11.3 mi
Spring took its name from Spring Creek, where William Pierpont set up a trading post in 1838; German immigrant farmers, including Carl Wunsche, arrived in the mid-1840s, growing sugar cane and cotton. The Houston and…
Mills, Farms, and Creek-Bottom Land · 11.3 mi
Creek-bottom land offered early settlers moisture, fertile alluvium, timber, and access to routes through the woods. German families and other farmers around Spring used that landscape for farms, livestock, and…
Wunsche Brothers Saloon and Hotel · 11.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Spring, and right here is a building that's seen it all. Constructed in 1902 by the Wunsche family, German immigrants who arrived in Texas back in 1846, this place was built to serve the railroad…
70 Tons of Crawfish: The Festival That Fed Old Town Spring · 11.3 mi
For over three decades from 1987, the Texas Crawfish & Music Festival took over Preservation Park in Old Town Spring each April-May, benefiting the Spring Preservation League, the nonprofit dedicated to preserving the…
The Bank Bonnie and Clyde (Probably) Never Robbed · 11.4 mi
The brick building at Midway and Gentry in Old Town Spring was the Spring State Bank, chartered May 19, 1910 (the first building burned in 1917). It really was robbed twice. May 24, 1932: two men pulled guns on…
Wunsche Bros.: A Railroad Saloon That Refused to Die · 11.4 mi
Built in 1902 by brothers Charlie and Dell Wunsche, grandsons of Carl Wunsche, one of the German immigrant farmers who settled the Spring area in the mid-1840s, the Wunsche Bros. Saloon and Hotel lodged and watered the…
The Wunsche Brothers' War: France, France, and a Model T · 11.4 mi
Old Town Spring, Texas, on the block where the Wunsche Bros. Cafe building still stands -- the Wunsche family was among the first to settle Spring. During World War I, three Wunsche brothers served. William Wunsche…
The Depot Agent Who Ended Up Owning the Town · 11.5 mi
Old Town Spring did not grow the way a town usually grows, one family at a time. Most of it traces back to a single railroad employee. R. L. Robinson was the station agent here, which in a railroad town is already a…
The Town Had a Semipro Ball Club and a Field on Main · 11.5 mi
Spring had a semiprofessional baseball club, and the field was on Main Street. The local record has Robinson and his wife providing the ground for it, which fits everything else about the man. If you want to understand…
One Teapot Came Out of the Ashes · 11.6 mi
On the twenty third of February, nineteen fifty three, fire took Immanuel Church and its parish hall. Not damaged. Destroyed, the whole campus of it, in a congregation that had been German speaking since it was founded…
Spring · 11.6 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Spring, a town that boomed thanks to the railroad. Platted in 1873 by the Houston & Great Northern Railroad, Spring quickly became a commercial hub, drawing German settlers and fueling a lumber…
Immanuel United Church of Christ of Sprin · 11.6 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving through Spring, and right here is Immanuel United Church of Christ, established back in 1913 as a German congregation. They built their first church by 1916, but a devastating fire in 1953 destroyed the…
C. E. King High School - Dillon Mitchell Sprint · 11.7 mi · Sports News
You're rolling through Sheldon, on the northeast edge of Houston, near C. E. King High School. C. E. King just put a sophomore on the national track map. His name is Dillon Mitchell. At the U. I. L. six A state…
Nimitz High School (Brittney Griner) · 11.8 mi
Nimitz High School (2005 W. W. Thorne Dr., Houston, TX, Aldine ISD) is where Brittney Griner rewrote the girls' basketball record books. As a senior she dunked 52 times in 32 games — including seven in a single game —…
Grangerland, TX · 12.1 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're driving through Grangerland, a community that owes its very name to Texas's oil boom. Back in the early 1930s, this area was mostly farmland and timber. But in late 1931, oil was struck nearby, kicking off a…
Greens Bayou · 12.2 mi
Greens Bayou is one of those Houston waterways whose namesake got lost to history — somewhere in the 1820s an early settler named Green left his name on it, but nobody wrote down who he was. What we do know is the…
Gum Gully · 12.2 mi
Gum Gully is a five-mile stream on the northeast side, rising a couple miles east of Lake Houston and running south to Jackson Bayou near a spot called Tank Lake. The name comes straight from the woods it drains — the…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Spring (Spring) · 12.3 mi
Spring (Spring, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Julian Curry (4 HR).
When the Goodyear Blimp Lived in Spring · 12.5 mi
From 1969 to 1992, Goodyear based a blimp operation on a 40-acre triangle along I-45 at Spring, the southeastern counterpart to its Carson, California base. The resident airship was the GZ20A 'America,' top speed about…
Spring-Cypress Road and the Store That Named Klein · 12.5 mi
Spring-Cypress Road links two old place names: the railroad town of Spring, which grew up around Spring Creek and the rail lines, and the Big Cypress farming community on Cypress Creek to the west. There was never a…
Texas HS Baseball Leaders 2026: Dekaney (Houston) · 12.7 mi
Dekaney (Houston, TX) placed on the 6A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Michael Hayes (4 HR).
The Made-to-Order Cafe Locals Call Their Own · 12.9 mi
If you want a meal that belongs to Oak Ridge North rather than to a chain, Compadres Texas Cafe at 26797 Hanna Road is the local pick. It's a homestyle Tex-Mex cafe that has anchored this stretch of town for years, the…
New York-Style Pies on Robinson Road · 13.1 mi
Right on Oak Ridge North's main commercial drag, at 27326 Robinson Road, Marini's Pizza turns out hand-tossed New York-style pies in a town better known for its quiet wooded lots than its restaurants. The shop started…
The Raven Who Gave Houston Its Name · 13.2 mi
Beltway Eight in Harris County is, by law, the Sam Houston Parkway, named for the man the city itself was named for in eighteen thirty six. Sam Houston was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, in seventeen ninety three.…
Oak Ridge North, TX · 13.2 mi · Tsha Handbook
You're cruising down I-45 South in Montgomery County, passing through Oak Ridge North. This community didn't exist until 1964, when a developer bought up land for a new subdivision. The timing was perfect: Interstate 45…
The Park Where the Whole Town Shows Up · 13.3 mi
For a city you can drive across in a couple of minutes, the social center of gravity is easy to find: Marilyn Edgar Park, over on Hillside Drive on the south side of town. It's the favorite gathering spot for Oak Ridge…
The Highway That Grew a Forest City · 13.4 mi
The very existence of Oak Ridge North is a testament to the power of civil engineering. Before the 1960s, this land was a dense forest, miles from Houston and largely inaccessible. The game-changer was the construction…
The Subdivision That Grew Up Beside a New Freeway · 13.4 mi
The wooded neighborhood you're passing started as a land deal. In 1964 an Arkansas outfit called the Spring Pines Corporation bought a big tract two miles north of Spring Creek, in the old Charles Eisterwall Survey…
They Became a City to Keep From Being Swallowed · 13.4 mi
By the late 1970s the people living here had a problem bigger than potholes: Houston. The big city to the south was aggressively annexing land outward, gobbling up unincorporated subdivisions and folding them into its…
The Town That Said 'No' to Houston · 13.4 mi
Right here in Oak Ridge North, you're in a city born from an act of defiance. By the late 1970s, this was a comfortable, unincorporated subdivision. But a threat was looming from the south: the City of Houston. Back…
Oak Ridge North, TX · 13.4 mi
The founding of Oak Ridge North can be traced back to 1964 when the Spring Pines Corporation purchased land with the intention of creating a subdivision. The development was taken over by United Diversified, Inc. in…
The Highway That Built the Town · 13.4 mi
Oak Ridge North is one of those rare towns you can say was engineered into existence, because without the freeway running past it the subdivision never pencils out. Construction on the North Freeway segment of…
The Island City · 13.4 mi
As you travel through Oak Ridge North, you might not realize you're on a tiny political island. The city is about a square mile and a half. But look at a map and you'll see something striking: it is hemmed in on every…
Spring: Where the World's Fastest Computer Is Run From · 13.5 mi
That office campus off Interstate 45 at Springwoods Village is the global headquarters of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, the company that traces back to the Palo Alto garage where Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard started in…
Greens Bayou · 13.5 mi
Greens Bayou is one of those Houston waterways whose namesake got lost to history — somewhere in the 1820s an early settler named Green left his name on it, but nobody wrote down who he was. What we do know is the…
Lake Houston · 13.6 mi
Eighteen miles northeast of downtown, the San Jacinto River fans out into the broad sheet of water that quenches a big chunk of Houston's thirst. The city itself built this one: crews broke ground in late 1951, finished…
The Woodlands Highway and the Man Who Planned the Town · 13.7 mi
From State Highway Two Forty Two south to the Harris County line, Interstate Forty Five is the George P. Mitchell Memorial Highway, named by the Legislature in two thousand nineteen. It runs past The Woodlands, the town…
A One-Square-Mile Holdout in a Sea of Master Planning · 13.7 mi
Look around and you'd be forgiven for thinking you're already in The Woodlands. You're not. Oak Ridge North is its own incorporated city, barely more than a square mile of land with around 3,000 residents, holding its…
San Jacinto River · 13.9 mi
This quiet brown river east of Houston punches way above its weight in history. The main stem is short, only about 28 miles from the dam below Lake Houston down to Galveston Bay, but down near its mouth, on April 21,…
The Land Grant Signed by Sam Houston · 14.0 mi
Charles and Bertha Haude were an unusual pair of Texas farmers. As Klein family history tells it, Charles had been a doctor in Prussia and spoke four languages, earning extra money as a translator, while Bertha had…
The Street Named for the Boy in the Bubble · 14.1 mi
The road called David Memorial Drive carries the name of one of the most famous medical patients of the twentieth century, and it's no accident the name landed here. David Phillip Vetter, born September 21, 1971, lived…
Lake Houston · 14.1 mi
Eighteen miles northeast of downtown, the San Jacinto River fans out into the broad sheet of water that quenches a big chunk of Houston's thirst. The city itself built this one: crews broke ground in late 1951, finished…
The Bubble, the Spacesuit, and a Lesson in Sterile Engineering · 14.1 mi
Behind the name on David Memorial Drive sits a genuine feat of biomedical engineering. To keep David Vetter alive with no immune system, a Texas Children's Hospital team raised him inside a gnotobiotic isolator, a…
Schlobohm Cemetery · 14.1 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the Schlobohm Cemetery, a resting place for a Texas Revolution veteran. Johann Schlobohm arrived in Texas by 1836, enlisting in the Zavalla Guards. His unit arrived in Galveston just before the…
Woodforest Bank Stadium · 14.2 mi
Woodforest Bank Stadium in Shenandoah, Texas, opened in 2008 and is owned by Conroe ISD, seating around 9,600. The Houston Chronicle (Nov. 2025) ranks it among the five most expensive high school football stadiums in…
Lake Houston · 14.2 mi
Eighteen miles northeast of downtown, the San Jacinto River fans out into the broad sheet of water that quenches a big chunk of Houston's thirst. The city itself built this one: crews broke ground in late 1951, finished…
The Funeral Bus That Tipped Over (and Other Wonders) · 14.3 mi
Houston is home to the National Museum of Funeral History, billed as the largest collection of funeral-service artifacts in the country. Star artifact: a 1916 Packard funeral bus built to carry the coffin, the…
The Drainage Ditch That Became a Downtown Canal · 14.3 mi
The handsome canal threading through The Woodlands' Town Center, with its walkways, bridges, and little cruising water taxis, started life as something far humbler: a drainage system. The story goes that planner Robert…
Crater Hill · 14.3 mi · Historical Marker
You're driving past the site of the Conroe oil field's most dramatic moment. Back in 1933, Standard Oil's Madeley No. 1 and No. 2 wells blew in, erupting into flames that shot 150 feet into the air! Firefighters battled…
The Fungal Partnership Underground · 14.5 mi
You're in The Woodlands, so here's the woodland tangent behind the name: many woodland fungi form mycorrhizal partnerships with tree roots. Fungal threads extend the area that can absorb water and nutrients, while the…
George Mitchell's City in a Forest · 14.5 mi
You're in The Woodlands, so here's the woodland tangent behind the name: George Mitchell opened The Woodlands in nineteen seventy four as a master-planned community intended to combine homes, schools, employment,…
The Oak That Was Sawn Into a Church · 14.5 mi
Around the year 723, an Anglo-Saxon missionary named Boniface came to Geismar, in what is now Hesse, and cut down an oak sacred to the Germanic thunder god Donar, the god the Norse called Thor. The account comes from a…
Woodland, Woods, or Forest? · 14.5 mi
You're in The Woodlands, so here's the woodland tangent behind the name: there is no single everyday border where woods end and forest begins. Woods often means a smaller wooded place, while forest suggests a larger…
A Dead Tree Is Still Working · 14.5 mi
You're in The Woodlands, so here's the woodland tangent behind the name: a standing dead tree, called a snag, can hold nest cavities for woodpeckers, owls, bats, and other wildlife. Fallen logs shelter insects, fungi,…
Fire Can Maintain a Woodland · 14.5 mi
You're in The Woodlands, so here's the woodland tangent behind the name: periodic fire is destructive in the wrong conditions, yet some woodland and pine ecosystems evolved with recurring low-intensity burns. Fire can…
Rings, Resin, and Autumn Color · 14.5 mi
You're in The Woodlands, so here's the woodland tangent behind the name: tree rings record annual growth, and their width, scars, wood chemistry, and cell structure can preserve evidence of drought, favorable years,…
Woodlands Manage Water and Heat · 14.5 mi
You're in The Woodlands, so here's the woodland tangent behind the name: tree crowns intercept rain, roots stabilize soil, leaf litter slows surface flow, and porous woodland soil can absorb and filter water. Those…
The Neighbors of Tamina · 14.5 mi
Just east of Shenandoah’s modern commercial sprawl lies a community with a much longer, and very different, history. This is the area of Tamina, a 'freedom colony' founded in 1871 by formerly enslaved people who had…
A Tree as an Address, Not an Object · 14.5 mi
The oldest form of the tree spirit is stricter than the modern one. Greek belief gave the woods nymphs called dryads, and the strictest kind, the hamadryads, were bound to a single tree apiece. The tree came into the…
Why You Are Supposed to Knock · 14.5 mi
The explanation people give runs like this. Spirits or gods lived inside the trees, oak and ash and hazel and willow above all, so you laid a hand or a knuckle on the trunk to wake one up, to call it, or to thank it for…
The Paper Trail Is Shorter Than the Story · 14.5 mi
Here is the wrinkle. The druids get the credit, but the written record is young. Folklorists Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud put the earliest known reference at about 1805, a mention of tig-touch-wood in a book of…
The Ones You Do Not Say Out Loud · 14.5 mi
In Irish tradition you avoid the plain word if you can. You say the Good People, or the Good Neighbours, or the Fair Folk, or the Gentry. The politeness is defensive rather than warm: naming a thing directly is thought…
The Southern Version Arrived by a Different Road · 14.5 mi
The idea that spirits can be caught in a tree reached this part of the country by another route entirely. Bottle trees, bare limbs hung with glass bottles, come out of Kongo tradition in west central Africa and were…

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Porter, Texas

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An Astronaut and Two Generations of Head RoadyGoat

One High School, an Astronaut and a Slugger RoadyGoat

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He Made Astronaut for a Program That Never Flew RoadyGoat

The Mill That Lost Its Apostrophe and an S RoadyGoat

From a Porter Living Room to the Voice Crown RoadyGoat

New Caney

Humble

Humble Oilfield

Humble, TX (Harris County)

Hightower, Verna Lee Booker [Boots]

Moonshine Hill

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