Houston is a large metropolis in Texas, extending to Galveston Bay. It&rsquo;s closely linked with the Space Center Houston, the coastal visitor center at NASA&rsquo;s astronaut training and flight control complex. The city&rsquo;s relatively compact Downtown includes the Theater District, home to the renowned Houston Grand Opera, and the Historic District, with 19th-century architecture and upscale restaurants.
Comprising a total area of 637.4 square miles (1,651 km2), Houston is the eighth most expansive city in the United States (including consolidated city-counties). It is the largest city in the United States by total area, whose government is not consolidated with that of a county, parish or borough. Though primarily in Harris County, small portions of the city extend into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, bordering other principal communities of Greater Houston such as Sugar Land and The Woodlands.
The city of Houston was founded by land investors on August 30, 1836, at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou (a point now known as Allen's Landing) and incorporated as a city on June 5, 1837. The city is named after former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had won Texas' independence from Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto 25 miles (40 km) east of Allen's Landing. After briefly serving as the capital of the Texas Republic in the late 1830s, Houston grew steadily into a regional trading center for the remainder of the 19th century.
The arrival of the 20th century saw a convergence of economic factors which fueled rapid growth in Houston, including a burgeoning port and railroad industry, the decline of Galveston as Texas' primary port following a devastating 1900 hurricane, the subsequent construction of the Houston Ship Channel, and the Texas oil boom. In the mid-20th century, Houston's economy diversified as it became home to the Texas Medical Center&mdash;the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions&mdash;and NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the Mission Control Center is located.

Houston

Sugar Land is a city just southwest of Houston, Texas. The Houston Museum of Natural Science at Sugar Land features a salt water aquarium and a digital dome theater. Fort Bend Children's Discovery Center offers interactive exhibits, including a child-size city called Kidtropolis. In the south, trails wind through Sugar Land Memorial Park and Brazos River Corridor. Oyster Creek Park includes a rose garden and a pond.

Sugar Land

Humble is a city located in Harris County, Texas, United States, within the Houston metropolitan area. Famously, Humble became an Oil Boomtown in the early 20th century when oil was first discovered there in 1903. By 1905, the Humble oilfield was the largest producing oilfield in Texas.

Humble

Spring is a census-designated place within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of Houston in Harris County, Texas, United States, part of the Houston&ndash;The Woodlands&ndash;Sugar Land metropolitan area. The population was 54,298 at the 2010 census.

Spring

Cypress is an unincorporated community in Harris County, Texas, United States located completely inside the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the City of Houston. The Cypress area is located along U.S. Highway 290 is twenty-four miles northwest of Downtown Houston

Cypress

Magnolia is a city in southwestern Montgomery County, Texas, United States within the Houston&ndash;The Woodlands&ndash;Sugar Land metropolitan area. It is named for the magnolia trees that grew in the area. The population was 1,393 at the 2010 United States Census.

Magnolia

Katy is a city just west of Houston, in Texas. The Katy Heritage Society Railroad Museum has train-related exhibits in a restored depot, with an old caboose railroad car outside. The Katy Heritage Museum features vintage farming equipment and antiques. Leafy Mary Jo Peckham Park is dominated by a fish-filled lake. Katy Park holds baseball fields and spacious picnic areas.

Katy

The city is named after Northern-born Union Cavalry officer and Houston lumberman Isaac Conroe. Conroe founded a sawmill there in 1881. The city originally gained in wealth due to the lumber and oil industries. Originally named "Conroe's Switch", the area saw an influx of residents in the late 19th century due to the lumber demands on the piney wood forest of the area.
During the 1930s, because of oil profits, the city boasted more millionaires per capita than any other U.S. city, though only briefly. After the construction of Interstate 45, many Houstonians began to settle communities around Conroe.

Conroe

The Woodlands was conceived after the oil industry investor George P. Mitchell attended a symposium by the Rouse Company subsidiary American City Corporation and developer of Columbia, Maryland. on how to develop new towns using the HUD Title VII program. It was dedicated by George P. Mitchell in 1974 and managed by The Woodlands Corporation as an extension of Mitchell Energy &amp; Development. Mitchell, an oil businessman, planned to establish a conference center, hotels, office parks, retail malls, schools, large distribution centers, and golf courses. Houses would range from moderately low to expensive and large. Bill Schadewald of the Houston Business Journal said that Mitchell wanted the development to "entice city slickers looking for far-flung suburban quality of life". Schadewald said that local sources stated that the HUD New Town program, a federally funded program, had a "low survival rate" and questioned whether The Woodlands would succeed.
The Woodlands Corporation was acquired on July 31, 1997, by a partnership between Morgan Stanley and Crescent Real Estate Equities. In December 2003, The Rouse Company acquired Crescent's interest, and Rouse was bought by General Growth Properties on November 12, 2004. In 2011 The Woodlands was sold to the Howard Hughes Development Corporation.
The land was previously occupied by the Grogan-Cochran Lumber Mill, hence Grogan's Mill and Cochran's Crossing neighborhoods, called "villages". The original planning utilized many of the planning concepts and design consultants employed in other well-regarded new communities of that era such as Columbia, Maryland, Irvine Ranch, California and Reston, Virginia. The original development plan included environmental design principles espoused by Ian McHarg, a distinguished landscape architect, teacher and author of the seminal work Design With Nature.
It continues to grow residentially and commercially as many companies are moving there. In addition to Chevron Phillips,&nbsp;Huntsman Corporation,&nbsp;Hewitt Associates,&nbsp;Lexicon Pharmaceuticals,&nbsp;Maersk,&nbsp;M&amp;S Engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;Woodforest National Bank&nbsp;have set up operations. The Town Center includes shopping and eating facilities as well as a waterway resembling the&nbsp;San Antonio River Walk.
On September 13, 2008, it sustained extensive damage from&nbsp;Hurricane Ike. Sustained winds of 85&nbsp;mph (137&nbsp;km/h) brought down thousands of trees, powerlines, and billboards in the area and severely damaged the&nbsp;Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Ike was the first hurricane to directly affect the area since&nbsp;Hurricane Alicia&nbsp;in 1983.
The summer of 2011 brought an unprecedented drought throughout Texas, which caused thousands of trees to die and requiring they be taken down, a process that continued into 2012.
In 2011, Schadewald said "Now: Obviously, The Woodlands had quite a future. Somewhere between First Colony and The Woodlands, I realized why visionary real estate developers strike it rich more often than skeptical real estate reporters."
In 2012, the U.S. Census Bureau designated the area around The Woodlands and Conroe as a "large urbanized transit area", defined as having over 200,000 residents, making it eligible to receive federal transportation funds.
From 2004-2018,&nbsp;water taxis&nbsp;known as "Waterway Cruisers" traveled along The Woodlands Waterway. On November 13, 2018, after suffering damage from Hurricane Harvey the year before, the six Waterway Cruisers were removed from the waterway

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Houston

Sugar Land

Humble

Spring

Cypress

Magnolia

Katy

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The Woodlands

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