Everything Huffman is known for
Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Huffman.
The community of Huffman, Texas, was named after David Huffman, a native of Louisiana who came to Texas to fight against Mexico during the Texas Revolution. His contributions to the area have left a lasting legacy, as the town bears his name to this day.
Huffman is located near Lake Houston, which serves as a water reservoir for the City of Houston and offers recreational activities such as boating, water skiing, jetting, fishing, and sailing. The area also features the 69-acre I.T. May Park, which includes eight lighted baseball fields, two lighted American football fields, concession stands, barbecue pits, picnic areas, two playgrounds, a paved quarter-mile walking trail, and restroom facilities.
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 there were certainly wells drilled nearby. Huffman's story is really about the lake. Lake Houston, created in the 1950s, fundamentally changed the area. Suddenly, there was waterfront property, recreational opportunities, and a slower pace of life just a short drive from the city. You see the impact of the lake everywhere. Weekend anglers come for the bass fishing, families rent lake houses for summer getaways, and retirees build homes with a view. But if you ask a long-time resident why people truly end up settling in Huffman, they'll probably tell you it's the community. It's a place where folks still wave when you drive by, where Friday night football is a big deal, and where generations of families have stayed rooted. The lake might draw you in, but it’s the small-town feel that keeps you here.
Sophomore sprinter Dillon Mitchell of C.E. King High School (Sheldon ISD, Houston) reportedly ran 9.92 in the 100m at the 2026 UIL 6A State Championships. Mitchell has previously run wind-aided 9.88 at the Texas A&M Bluebonnet Invitational and a wind-legal 10.10 at the Texas Relays. He is also a top-rated wide receiver recruit who helped lead C.E. King to a 6A Division II state football final.
Price Daniel, governor of Texas, son of Marion Price and Nannie Blanch (Partlow) Daniel, was born on October 10, 1910, in Dayton, Texas. After earning a law degree from Baylor University in 1932 he opened a law practice in Liberty, Liberty County. He became known through his defense of two of the county's most infamous murder suspects, and used the popularity to win a seat in the Texas House of Representatives in 1939. As an outspoken member of the "Immortal 56," an alliance of state legislators adamantly opposed to a state sales tax, Daniel earned the respect of his colleagues and in early 1943 was unanimously elected speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. After serving one term in that office he enlisted in the army as a private and the following year graduated from officers' candidate school in Lexington, Virginia, as a judge advocate general. He was discharged from the army in May 1946 with the rank of captain, after having served in the Pacific and Japan. He returned to Texas and conducted a successful whirlwind campaign to become the youngest state attorney general in the United States. In his six-year tenure, Daniel disposed of more than 5,000 lawsuits, served on 25 state boards and agencies, composed more than 2,000 bills for the Texas legislature, and successfully defended more money and land claims than any previous attorney general . His three best-known crusades were the defense of the University of Texas law school in its refusal to admit Heman Marion Sweatt , a black postal clerk; the disbandment of a majority of the state's organized gambling operations; and the defense of Texas ownership of its tidelands against federal encroachment ( see TIDELANDS CONTROVERSY ). When the United States Supreme Court refused to allow Texas to retain the tidelands, valuable offshore lands rich in oil that Daniel argued belonged to Texas because of an agreement in the terms of the state's annexation , he defied the Democratic party by endorsing the Republican, states'-rights candidate, Dwight D. Eisenhower . In 1952, Daniel was elected to the United States Senate on a "Texas Democrat" platform. He immediately drafted a tidelands bill similar to the one President Harry Truman had previously vetoed, and on May 22, 1953, Eisenhower signed it into law. As a result the Permanent School Fund has received an infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars. While in the Senate, Daniel directed a nationwide narcotics probe that eventually resulted in the most stringent narcotics regulation in United States history, and nearly succeeded in the passage of legislation designed to reform the electoral college. Declaring that he would "rather be governor of Texas than President of the United States," Daniel returned home to run for governor and, upon his nomination in 1956, resigned from the Senate. He was reelected governor in 1958 and 1960. During his tenure 131 out of 151 of his major proposals were enacted into law. He was successful in pushing through a heavy legislative program that ranged from highways to prison reform, water conservation, higher teachers' salaries, and improved care for the mentally impaired. Being a devoted student of history, Daniel worked to establish the Texas State Library and Archives Building, which he virtually designed himself, to house many Texas papers and documents that had been subject to neglect. In 1961, despite his strident objections, he could only watch in his third term as the legislature approved a sales tax after two called special sessions. He allowed the tax to become law without his signature to keep the state from going broke. Much of the electorate blamed him for the sales tax, partly because store clerks developed the practice of ringing up sales and then saying, "Now, let's have a penny for Price." After losing a bid for an unprecedented fourth term in 1962, Daniel returned to his law practice and took cases in both Liberty and Austin. In 1967, President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed hi
David Herbert McNerney, Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient, was born to an Irish-Catholic family in Lowell, Massachusetts, on June 2, 1931. He was the fifth of five children of Edward and Helen McNerney. A combat veteran of World War I , Edward McNerney, having earned the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts, served as a role model for his children. David McNerney's brother and sister served in the military during World War II , and another brother flew combat missions as a United States Navy pilot during the Vietnam War. The McNerney family moved to Houston in 1940. David McNerney graduated from Houston's St. Thomas High School in 1949 and enlisted in the United States Navy. After McNerney completed his service, he returned to Texas in 1953. David McNerney was briefly enrolled at the University of Houston but enlisted in the United States Army after seeing a recruitment poster on campus in 1953. McNerney excelled as a combat infantry soldier during his military career. He volunteered for special warfare training in 1962. He served as one of the first American advisers sent to Vietnam in the early 1960s and did a second tour of duty in 1964. In late 1965 McNerney was assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, to train draftees for combat in Vietnam. In 1966 Company A, First Battalion, Eighth Infantry Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division received much of their basic training and advanced infantry training from Drill Sergeant McNerney. McNerney talked tough and demanded respect from draftees as well as officers. "Let me tell you how things are in this company," McNerney informed his men. "You do what I tell you to do and you do it when I tell you to do it, because you will die in Vietnam if you don't." Although an imposing figure, McNerney developed a bond with the soldiers during their training. At the end of the training in September, he announced that he would be going to Vietnam with them, and in early October 1966 McNerney and Company A arrived in South Vietnam. On March 21, 1967, David McNerney was serving as a first sergeant of Company A in a remote region near Polei Doc in Kon Tum Province in South Vietnam near the Cambodian border. Radio contact had been lost with a reconnaissance unit operating in the area, and McNerney's company had been sent in to find them. The company, consisting of 108 soldiers, was surprised by a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) battalion and heavy machine gun fire at 7:30 A.M. on March 22. Moving quickly, McNerney aided the company commander in establishing a defense perimeter and a base of fire. McNerney then saw several NVA moving through the thick jungle and killed them at close range. He suffered a chest injury when an exploding grenade knocked him to the ground. Unhindered by his wound, McNerney then attacked and eliminated an enemy machine gun nest that had pinned down five of his men outside of the perimeter. Within a few minutes about forty Americans were wounded, and twenty-two others had been killed, including the company commander and the forward artillery observer; both were killed as a result of a direct hit from an enemy rocket. The North Vietnamese force also had surrounded the Americans and outnumbered them at least three to one. First Sergeant McNerney took control of the company and began to issue orders just as panic set in among some of the men. In a daring move, he called for artillery fire to within twenty meters from his position to curtail enemy assaults. On his own, McNerney "moved into a nearby clearing to designate the location to friendly aircraft." Although exposed to enemy fire, he "remained exposed until he was certain the position was spotted and then climbed into a tree and tied the identification panel to its highest branches." McNerney proceeded to move among his men and offered encouragement, readjusted their location, and looked after the wounded. As the enemy attacks declined, he sought a location where a helicopter could land and remove wound
Humphrey Jackson, Harris County pioneer, member of Stephen F. Austin 's Old Three Hundred colonists, and early San Jacinto District official, was born on November 24, 1784, in Belfast, Ireland, where his father owned flour and linen mills and was a member of the Irish Parliament that was dissolved in 1801. Jackson was educated in the law and immigrated to the United States in 1808. He settled at Berwick's Bayou, Louisiana, where he operated a sugar plantation near Vermillionville and served as a private with Baker's Louisiana Militia regiment at the battle of New Orleans in 1815. Jackson had married a Miss White, who died shortly without children. On October 13, 1814, he married Sarah Merriman, his first wife's cousin, with whom he had four children. Unable to run his plantation because he chose not to own slaves, Jackson traveled to Texas in September 1823 and built a log cabin outside Austin's colony on the San Jacinto River, a half mile west of the site of present Crosby. When it was discovered that he had settled outside the colony, Jackson petitioned the Baron de Bastrop , who on August 16, 1824, granted him title to a league and a labor of land, including the place where he had settled, in what is now Harris County. To become a legal colonist, Jackson next petitioned the Mexican government to form the San Jacinto District under control of the Austin colony; he was elected alcalde of the new district in 1824, 1825, and 1827, and served as ex officio militia captain of the San Jacinto area. In May 1825 he was appointed deputy constable in a case involving the schooner Mary . The census of March 1826 classified him as a farmer and stock raiser, a widower with a household including one servant, three sons, and a daughter. He offered Austin his services to help put down the Fredonian Rebellion in 1827 and in 1828 was regidor of Liberty Municipality. He was also a candidate for alcalde in 1830, when Francis W. Johnson was elected. Jackson was killed by a falling tree on January 18, 1833, and buried at Crosby. Jackson's Bayou in eastern Harris County is probably named for him.
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
Humphrey (1784-1833), Sarah Merriman Jackson (1796-1823), and their family came to Texas as members of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" colony in 1823 and settled east of the San Jacinto River. Jackson's land grant opened up the San Jacinto District and expanded the perimeter of Austin's grant, providing an additional area for Anglo settlement. Sarah was mother to four children and died one year after settling in Texas. Humphrey and Sarah Jackson are buried nearby. The zinc marker at their grave site was built by the Monumental Bronze Works of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Ninfa Laurenzo was a widow with five kids when she opened a little restaurant in her late husbands failing tortilla factory on Navigation Boulevard in 1973.…
The last surviving WWI-era dreadnought. Fought at D-Day and Iwo Jima.
Taller than the Washington Monument. Where Texas won independence in 18 minutes.
On April 21 1836 Sam Houston and nine hundred Texans caught Santa Annas army napping at San Jacinto and won Texas independence in eighteen minutes. Six hundred…
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…
Most recent: 2019 4A
Hargrave High School in Huffman, Texas, fields competitive teams, and their softball program stands out. Competing in Class 4A, the Lady Falcons have achieved top honors in the state. Their consistent effort on the diamond has brought significant recognition to the Huffman community.
The Hargrave High School softball team reached the pinnacle of Texas high school sports by securing a state championship in 2019. This achievement reflects the dedication and hard work of the athletes and coaching staff within the Class 4A division, bringing pride to their hometown.
The Hargrave High School softball team won the Class 4A state championship in 2019.
438 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.
The community of Huffman, Texas, was named after David Huffman, a native of Louisiana who came to Texas to fight against Mexico during the Texas Revolution. His contributions to the area have left a lasting legacy, as…
Huffman-Hargrave is picked fourth in District nine, four-A Division One — the last playoff spot, with Vidor pushing hard for it. Vidor brings a lot back, and the preview asks straight out whether it is enough to get…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
You're in Crosby, a town with Czech roots and a skillet in its past. After the railroad era began, immigrant families from Slovakia, Bohemia, and Moravia settled the farmland here, and their family names still mark the…
You're in Crosby, on land settled two centuries ago by one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists. Humphrey Jackson, an Irish-born settler, built a log cabin on the San Jacinto River about a half-mile west…
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…
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…
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,…
David Herbert McNerney, Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient, was born to an Irish-Catholic family in Lowell, Massachusetts, on June 2, 1931. He was the fifth of five children of Edward and Helen McNerney. A combat…
Crosby has worn three names, and the original was the most colorful. Early travelers knew this spot as Lick Skillet, the story being that ox-team drivers camped here, drank the sweet spring water, and licked their…
Humphrey Jackson, Harris County pioneer, member of Stephen F. Austin 's Old Three Hundred colonists, and early San Jacinto District official, was born on November 24, 1784, in Belfast, Ireland, where his father owned…
You're driving through Crosby, a community named for a railroad engineer. Right here, back in 1865, Charlie Karcher opened the first store, and this spot quickly became a hub for shipping lumber and farm goods. A post…
There's no well-documented historic restaurant inside Barrett proper, but the nearest local institution fits the town's story almost too well. The Crawfish Shack sits at 5822 FM 2100 in Crosby, right on the main…
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…
Jackson Bayou is a little three-and-a-half-mile stream around Crosby, but its namesake lived a big life. Humphrey Jackson was born in Belfast in 1784, fought at the Battle of New Orleans, then came to Texas in 1823 and…
Humphrey (1784-1833), Sarah Merriman Jackson (1796-1823), and their family came to Texas as members of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" colony in 1823 and settled east of the San Jacinto River. Jackson's land grant opened…
Sophomore sprinter Dillon Mitchell of C.E. King High School (Sheldon ISD, Houston) reportedly ran 9.92 in the 100m at the 2026 UIL 6A State Championships. Mitchell has previously run wind-aided 9.88 at the Texas A&M…
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 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,…
In nineteen-eighty, Ben and Jean Williams bought a brand-new house in the Newport subdivision out here in Crosby. Three years later their neighbors, the Haneys, dug into their own backyard for a swimming pool and pulled…
You're near the Crosby Fairgrounds on FM 2100, home of the Crosby Fair and Rodeo. Founded in 1946 as a nonprofit supporting Crosby-area youth, it marked eighty years of tradition in 2026, making it one of the…
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…
Price Daniel, governor of Texas, son of Marion Price and Nannie Blanch (Partlow) Daniel, was born on October 10, 1910, in Dayton, Texas. After earning a law degree from Baylor University in 1932 he opened a law practice…
You're driving through Liberty County, near Dayton, where Captain Aaron Day Jr. began his remarkable journey. Born in 1891, Day was an African-American officer in World War I, a rarity in the U.S. Army of the time. He…
You're driving through Dayton, Texas, but this place has a split personality. It started as West Liberty, part of the original town of Liberty, founded way back in 1831. The Trinity River was the dividing line, with…
Jackson Bayou is a little three-and-a-half-mile stream around Crosby, but its namesake lived a big life. Humphrey Jackson was born in Belfast in 1784, fought at the Battle of New Orleans, then came to Texas in 1823 and…
You're driving through Liberty County, and right here, you're passing near the path of a railroad born from black gold. The Dayton-Goose Creek Railway was incorporated in <say-as interpret-as="date"…
Don't blink or you'll miss Big Eddy — it's only about a mile and a half long, a short swampy channel that peels off just south of the San Jacinto Dam below Lake Houston and curls back to rejoin the San Jacinto River.…
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…
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…
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.…
You're driving past Stilson, a town born from a railroad and a dream. It all kicked off in <say-as interpret-as="date" format="y">1896</say-as>, when developers O.H. Stilson and Rodney Hill bought this land and started…
Don't blink or you'll miss Big Eddy — it's only about a mile and a half long, a short swampy channel that peels off just south of the San Jacinto Dam below Lake Houston and curls back to rejoin the San Jacinto River.…
You're driving past the spot where Humphrey Jackson, a man who walked away from slavery and found his way to Texas, settled near the San Jacinto River. Born in Ireland in 1784, he fought in the Battle of New Orleans…
Kingwood, carved out of the East Texas piney woods in the early 1970s, doesn't have the deep, layered ethnic history of some older Texas towns. Its story is different, more about a deliberate creation of community…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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:…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
Here in Porter, Texas, the land tells a story older than any of us. We're part of the Gulf Coastal Plain, which means we're built on layers of sediment washed down over millennia. Think sand and clay, the kind of stuff…
Jackson Bayou is a little three-and-a-half-mile stream around Crosby, but its namesake lived a big life. Humphrey Jackson was born in Belfast in 1784, fought at the Battle of New Orleans, then came to Texas in 1823 and…
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…
Don't blink or you'll miss Big Eddy — it's only about a mile and a half long, a short swampy channel that peels off just south of the San Jacinto Dam below Lake Houston and curls back to rejoin the San Jacinto River.…
This community east of the San Jacinto River began with one man's search. Harrison Barrett was born enslaved in Texas around 1845, the son of Simon and Eliza Barrett, a family that had come from Louisiana. After…
When you stand in Barrett you are standing in one of southeast Texas's surviving freedom colonies, the communities formed by formerly enslaved people and their descendants between the Civil War and the early twentieth…
In Barrett, the first school and the first church were the same building. Harrison Barrett donated the land for Shiloh Baptist Church, and like many freedom colonies the church did double duty as the community's…
The water tower here reads Barrett Station, and that single word is at the center of a long argument over who gets to name a community. A postal substation opened in the mid-1940s, after which the area became widely…
Once a year Barrett turns into a destination for its own children. The Barrett Homecoming grew into a multi-day reunion built around a parade, a barbecue cook-off, church activities, youth groups, horses and marching…
Behind Barrett Elementary stands a big oak that locals call the Guardian Oak. The school opened in 1991 and was reportedly designed around the existing tree, which once gave the campus one of its only shaded gathering…
The small family cemetery here carries one of the most fitting names in Harris County. Journey's End holds Harrison Barrett and his wife Annie Jones Barrett, along with four other family members, on the same land the…
Out along Old Highway 90 East, now a frontage road just west of FM 2100, a Texas Century Farm sign stands beside the Harrison Barrett historical marker. The recognition is rarer than it sounds: in 1989 the Harrison…
You're driving past the site of Barrett's Settlement, a community founded by Harrison Barrett. Born into slavery around 1845, Barrett was determined to reunite his family after emancipation in 1865. He successfully…
At 808 1/2 Magnolia Avenue sits the Barrett Station-Riley Chambers Community Center, one of the practical anchors of a place that has no city hall of its own. Barrett is unincorporated, with no mayor, no city council…
Southeast of U.S. 90, Riley Chambers Park is one of the main public gathering spaces in the Barrett-Crosby area, with sports and recreation facilities spread across roughly 35 acres, or 40.4 acres by the Harris County…
Barrett sits on low, flat land just east of the San Jacinto River, and that geography cuts both ways. The same river system that once gave the original community timber, groundwater, fish and crayfish also drops the…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
You're driving past the historic site of Humble, Texas, a town whose name became synonymous with oil! It all started with Pleasant Smith Humble, a settler who was here way before the boom. But the real story kicks off…
You're driving through Harris County, near the town of Humble. Right here, the ground beneath you once roared with the Humble Oil Field, a place that helped kickstart the Texas oil boom. Back in 1902, prospectors were…
You're driving through Humble, Texas, a town that owes its very existence to a gusher. In 1904, oil was discovered right here, and Humble exploded into a boomtown practically overnight. Within months, ten thousand…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
Dayton (Dayton, TX) placed on the 5A Texas high school baseball stat leaderboards for the 2026 season: Zak Wood (5 HR).
Dayton High School's Broncos have sent more than one player to the pros, but the standout is fullback Aaron Ripkowski. Born in 1992, he grew up here and played his high school ball at Dayton, lining up at guard,…
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…
Jackson Bayou is a little three-and-a-half-mile stream around Crosby, but its namesake lived a big life. Humphrey Jackson was born in Belfast in 1784, fought at the Battle of New Orleans, then came to Texas in 1823 and…
Barrett began as one man's long family reunion. After 1865, Harrison Barrett spent years tracking down his scattered relatives, and he found every one of them except a single sister. In 1889 he bought land in piney…
Sheldon Lake State Park and Environmental Learning Center is a 2,789-acre state park in northeast Harris County, Texas. The park was originally constructed as a reservoir in 1942 to support war-related industries along…
Right here, just south of U.S. Highway 90 in Harris County, you're driving through the heart of what began as Barrett's Settlement. It was founded after the Civil War by Harrison Barrett, a formerly enslaved man who…
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…
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…
You're cruising through New Caney, Texas, a town with roots stretching back to the 1860s. It started as Presswood, named for a pioneer family who settled here in 1862, raising cattle on the open range. Then came the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
New Caney, Texas, sits right in the heart of Montgomery County, and for generations, this area's been synonymous with timber. The East Texas Piney Woods stretch right through here, and the land's always been ideal for…
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…
This quiet wetland east of Houston was born of World War II. In 1942–43 the federal government dammed Carpenters Bayou to pond water for the synthetic-rubber plants and war industries booming along the Houston Ship…
You're driving through Dayton, and right here is the former home of Walter S. Neel, a man who wore many hats in this town. Built in just two months back in 1917 for a cool $2,500, this American Foursquare style house…
Methodist worship services started in this area way back in 1855, before it was even called Dayton. By the turn of the century, in 1900, the First Methodist Church had its own pastor, holding services in the local…
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…
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…
Dayton's importance was never really about Dayton; it was about being the junction where a busy main line met the oil country to the south. In 1917 a Humble Oil executive named Ross S. Sterling, who would later become…
Few small Texas towns can claim two governors born within a few years of each other, but Dayton can. Marion Price Daniel Sr. was born here on October 10, 1910, the son of M. P. and Nannie Partlow Daniel. He went on to…
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 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…
Out toward the Trinity River east of town rises Davis Hill, an unlikely bump of high ground in a landscape that is otherwise dead flat and swampy. The slight rise is enough to change everything biologically. As the…
The town you're rolling through started out as the western half of Liberty, the old colonial town founded in 1831 on the Trinity River. The river split the settlement in two: Liberty sat on the east bank, and the part…
Dayton's first try at being a real city lasted barely a season. The town voted itself into official existence on May 3, 1911, complete with a mayor and a slate of aldermen. Then, in late August of that same year, a fire…
In the spring of 1836, this stretch of road east of town saw one of the most desperate scenes of the Texas Revolution. As Santa Anna's army marched east after the fall of the Alamo, Sam Houston pulled back and the…
At 111 West Houston Street sits the building Dayton uses to remember itself: the Old School, now the home of the Dayton Historical Society's museum. It went up around 1900 as a modest two-room schoolhouse on a site the…
Locals here like to drop a fact that sounds impossible in a place this flat: Dayton claims to sit on the highest point between Houston and New Orleans. The town's stated elevation is only about 84 feet above sea level,…
Sheldon is named for a man who likely never set foot here. When the Texas and New Orleans Railroad pushed through northeastern Harris County in the early 1860s, the new stop on the line needed a name, and it got one…
You're driving past the White Cemetery, a final resting place for some of Texas's earliest settlers. Reuben White, one of Stephen F. Austin's original 'Old 300' colonists, received a Mexican land grant right here in…
You're driving through Dayton, Texas, where the First Baptist Church has roots going way back. In 1878, just ten worshippers gathered to form the very first Baptist congregation here. They met in a one-room schoolhouse…
You're driving past Linney Cemetery, founded in the 1850s to serve the growing community of West Liberty, now Dayton. Early sections were informally known by the families buried there, like Smith and Alford, and a…
Dayton, Texas, has a rich history that dates back to 1831 when it was founded as West Liberty. It was situated three miles west of the Trinity River, with Liberty on the east bank. Over the years, the town went by…
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…
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,…
As you look out over the flat fields surrounding Dayton, you might think they're just natural prairie. But you're actually looking at a massive, man-made agricultural machine, engineered for one purpose: growing rice.…
Dayton, Texas, is a transportation hub with several major roads and rail lines passing through the city. The major route passing through Dayton is U.S. Highway 90, which travels west towards Crosby and Houston and east…
You're driving through Liberty County, right where thousands of Texians fled for their lives. This was the Runaway Scrape. After hearing about the Alamo's fall in March of <say-as interpret-as="date"…
You're driving through Dayton, where in the late 1890s, Annie Colbert became the first African American teacher hired by the school district. Forbidden to teach in Houston as a married woman, she moved here, and with…
The bridges you cross over the Trinity River today are the modern solution to a very old problem. For more than a century this river was the biggest barrier to travel in Southeast Texas. When Liberty was laid out in…
Imagine growing up in a small town like Dayton and ending up as one of the most powerful people in the state. That's the story of Price Daniel. Born here in 1910 and raised in the area, Daniel's life was a masterclass…
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…
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 --…
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.…
Here's a bayou with Texas in its bones. Carpenters Bayou was likely named for David Carpenter, a blacksmith who came over with Austin's Old Three Hundred — the first 300 families to colonize Texas — and who happened to…
You're at Sheldon Lake State Park and Environmental Learning Center in northeast Harris County, and this lake exists because of World War II. In 1943 the federal government dammed Carpenters Bayou and pumped in San…
This quiet wetland east of Houston was born of World War II. In 1942–43 the federal government dammed Carpenters Bayou to pond water for the synthetic-rubber plants and war industries booming along the Houston Ship…
This quiet wetland east of Houston was born of World War II. In 1942–43 the federal government dammed Carpenters Bayou to pond water for the synthetic-rubber plants and war industries booming along the Houston Ship…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Here's a bayou with Texas in its bones. Carpenters Bayou was likely named for David Carpenter, a blacksmith who came over with Austin's Old Three Hundred — the first 300 families to colonize Texas — and who happened to…
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.…
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…
This quiet wetland east of Houston was born of World War II. In 1942–43 the federal government dammed Carpenters Bayou to pond water for the synthetic-rubber plants and war industries booming along the Houston Ship…
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…
Old River is exactly what the name claims — the abandoned former channel of the San Jacinto River, a four-mile oxbow the river left behind when it cut itself a new course through the tidal flats east of Channelview.…
A mile northeast of the town of Highlands, on a high east bank of the San Jacinto River, sits a square mile of stored water most Houstonians have never heard of. Highlands got its name from simple geography — the east…
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…
You're driving past the French Cemetery, a place with a name that hints at a mystery. Local legend says French settlers were killed and buried near here way back in the 1700s. No one's found their graves, but the name…
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,…
A mile northeast of the town of Highlands, on a high east bank of the San Jacinto River, sits a square mile of stored water most Houstonians have never heard of. Highlands got its name from simple geography — the east…
You're in Dyersdale, a small community on FM 527 and the old Missouri Pacific line (formerly the Beaumont, Sour Lake and Western Railway) about six miles northeast of Houston in northeastern Harris County, Texas. It is…
Highlands is named for elevation you can actually see. The community sits on the east bank of the San Jacinto River, and that bank stands noticeably higher than the west one. Simple as that, the high lands. The name was…
A mile northeast of the town of Highlands, on a high east bank of the San Jacinto River, sits a square mile of stored water most Houstonians have never heard of. Highlands got its name from simple geography — the east…
You're in Highlands, named for sitting on the high east bank of the San Jacinto River, a rail-stop town since about 1908. Its hidden claim to fame flows in ditches: in the early 1940s the Federal Works Agency built a…
A mile northeast of the town of Highlands, on a high east bank of the San Jacinto River, sits a square mile of stored water most Houstonians have never heard of. Highlands got its name from simple geography — the east…
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…
In 1954, a significant event in Kenefick's history took place when Rev. William Bythel Hagee, father of John Hagee, was called to the ministry. Prior to this, he had been a refinery worker at the Humble Oil Refinery in…
The tracks that cut through Kenefick are the town's birth certificate, but the story starts before them. People were here before 1830 - a settler named Reason Green and the people he held in slavery worked this ground a…
As you look out over the flat country around Kenefick, you may be looking at one of the most engineered agricultural systems in the world: a rice field. Growing rice here is a masterclass in hydrology, soil science and…
For most of its life, Kenefick wasn't officially a town — it was a place on the map in Liberty County, and even its name was borrowed. The community grew up along the Beaumont, Sour Lake and Western Railway after 1904,…
You're driving past the site of the Sampson Masonic Lodge No. 231, chartered in 1859. Named for Grand Master Henry Sampson, the lodge has relocated several times, most recently to Highlands in 1951, and continues…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…