Williamsburg, Virginia
Williamsburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. As of the 2010 U. S. Census, the population was 14,068. In 2014, the population was estimated to be 14,691. Located on the Virginia Peninsula, Williamsburg is in the northern part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area, it is bordered by James City York County. Williamsburg was founded in 1632 as Middle Plantation, a fortified settlement on high ground between the James and York rivers; the city served as the capital of the Colony and Commonwealth of Virginia from 1699 to 1780 and was the center of political events in Virginia leading to the American Revolution. The College of William & Mary, established in 1693, is the second-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and the only one of the nine colonial colleges located in the South. S. Presidents as well as many other important figures in the nation's early history; the city's tourism-based economy is driven by Colonial Williamsburg, the restored Historic Area of the city.
Along with nearby Jamestown and Yorktown, Williamsburg forms part of the Historic Triangle, which attracts more than four million tourists each year. Modern Williamsburg is a college town, inhabited in large part by William & Mary students and staff. Prior to the arrival of the English colonists at Jamestown in the Colony of Virginia in 1607, the area which became Williamsburg was within the territory of the Powhatan Confederacy. By the 1630s, English settlements had grown to dominate the lower portion of the Virginia Peninsula, the Powhatan tribes had abandoned their nearby villages. Between 1630 and 1633, after the war that followed the Indian Massacre of 1622, the English colonists constructed a defensive palisade across the peninsula and a settlement named Middle Plantation as a primary guard station along the palisade. Jamestown was the original capital of Virginia Colony, but was burned down during the events of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676; as soon as Governor William Berkeley regained control, temporary headquarters for the government to function were established about 12 miles away on the high ground at Middle Plantation, while the Statehouse at Jamestown was rebuilt.
The members of the House of Burgesses discovered that the'temporary' location was both safer and more pleasant environmentally than Jamestown, humid and plagued with mosquitoes. A school of higher education had long been an aspiration of the colonists. An early attempt at Henricus failed after the Indian Massacre of 1622; the location at the outskirts of the developed part of the colony had left it more vulnerable to the attack. In the 1690s, the colonists tried again to establish a school, they commissioned Reverend James Blair, who spent several years in England lobbying, obtained a royal charter for the desired new school. It was to be named the College of Mary in honor of the monarchs of the time; when Reverend Blair returned to Virginia, the new school was founded in a safe place, Middle Plantation in 1693. Classes began in temporary quarters in 1694, the College Building, a precursor to the Wren Building, was soon under construction. Four years in 1698, the rebuilt Statehouse in Jamestown burned down again, this time accidentally.
The government again relocated'temporarily' to Middle Plantation, in addition to the better climate now enjoyed use of the College's facilities. The College students made a presentation to the House of Burgesses, it was agreed in 1699 that the colonial capital should be permanently moved to Middle Plantation. A village was laid out and Middle Plantation was renamed Williamsburg in honor of King William III of England, befitting the town's newly elevated status. Following its designation as the Capital of the Colony, immediate provision was made for construction of a capitol building and for plotting out the new city according to the survey of Theodorick Bland, his design utilized the extant sites of the College and the almost-new brick Bruton Parish Church as focal points, placed the new Capitol building opposite the College, with Duke of Gloucester Street connecting them. Alexander Spotswood, who arrived in Virginia as lieutenant governor in 1710, had several ravines filled and streets leveled, assisted in erecting additional College buildings, a church, a magazine for the storage of arms.
In 1722, the town of Williamsburg was granted a royal charter as a "city incorporate". However, it was a borough. Middle Plantation was included in James City Shire when it was established in 1634, as the Colony reached a total population of 5,000.. However, the middle ground ridge line was the dividing line with Charles River Shire, renamed York County after King Charles I fell out of favor with the citizens of England; as Middle Plantation and Williamsburg developed, the boundaries were adjusted slightly. For most of the colonial period, the border between the two counties ran down the center of Duke of Gloucester Street. During this time, for 100 years after the formation of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States, despite practical complications, the town remained divided between the two counties. Williamsburg was the site of the first attempted canal in the United States. In 1771, Lord Dunmore, who would turn out to be Virginia's last Royal Governor, announced plans to connect Archer's Creek, which leads to the James River with Queen's Creek, leading to the York River.
It was not completed. Remains of this c
Lead, South Dakota
Lead is a city in Lawrence County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 3,124 at the 2010 census. Lead is located in the Black Hills near the Wyoming state line; the city was founded on July 10, 1876, after the discovery of gold. The city was named for the lodes of the deposits of valuable ores, it is the site of the Homestake Mine, the largest and most productive gold mine in the Western Hemisphere before closing in January 2002. By 1910, Lead had a population of 8,382. Lead was founded as a company town by the Homestake Mining Company, which ran the nearby Homestake Mine. Phoebe Hearst, wife of George Hearst, one of the principals, was instrumental in making Lead more livable, she established the Hearst Free Public Library in town, in 1900 the Hearst Free Kindergarten. Phoebe Hearst and Thomas Grier, the Homestake Mine superintendent, worked together to create the Homestake Opera House and Recreation Center for the benefit of miner workers and their families. Phoebe Hearst donated to Lead's churches, provided college scholarships to the children of mine and mill workers.
In the early 1930s, due to fear of cave-ins of the miles of tunnels under Lead's Homestake Mine, many of the town's buildings located in the bottom of a canyon were moved further uphill to safer locations. Lead and the Homestake Mine have been selected as the site of the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, a proposed NSF facility for low-background experiments on neutrinos, dark matter, other nuclear physics topics, as well as biology and mine engineering studies. In 1974, most of Lead was added to the National Register of Historic Places under the name of the "Lead Historic District". Over four hundred buildings and 580 acres were included in the historic district, which has boundaries equivalent to the city limits. Lead is located at 44°21′3″N 103°45′57″W. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 2.06 square miles, all of it land. Lead has been assigned the ZIP code 57754 and the FIPS place code 36220. Lead's proximity to Deadwood, South Dakota leads to the two cities being collectively named "Lead-Deadwood".
Two prominent man-made features of Lead's geography are the giant open cut, used for surface gold mining by the Homestake Mine, the resulting ridge nearby built with the non-producing material from the cut. Lead has a humid continental climate with warm summers and cold snowy winters with the typical variable temperatures of the western Great Plains, its high elevation in the Black Hills makes Lead one of the wettest places in South Dakota and among the snowiest places in the contiguous United States with a mean snowfall of 145 inches or 3.68 metres. During the cold and snowy winter of 1993–94, a whopping 364.7 inches of snow fell and three years snowfall totalled 324.0 inches. However, frequent chinook winds mean that most of the enormous snowfall melts during the winter: the highest snow cover on record is 73 inches on March 1, 1998 – during a storm that totalled 114.6 inches or 2.91 metres of snow over six days ending March 2. Mean snow depth in January is only 7 inches or 0.18 metres and the median less at 5 inches or 0.13 metres.
15.4 mornings can be expected to fall to or below 0 °F, with the average window for zero temperatures being December 7 to March 3. The coldest temperature has been −40 °F or −40 °C on February 8, 1936. During the spring, weather becomes changeable with frequent severe storms: the first maximum of at least 70 °F or 21.1 °C can be expected on April 17, but the last spring freeze does not occur until May 24. The spring is the wettest season owing to the frequent storms, with the wettest month of May 1965 seeing 14.84 inches of precipitation. The wettest year – and a South Dakota calendar year record – has been 2013 with 49.52 inches and the driest 1936 with 12.84 inches. Summers are warm in the afternoon, but mornings are pleasantly cool: frost-level temperatures occurred in July 1921 and in the Augusts of 1910 and 1911, with August 1910 seeing a freak snowstorm of 1.5 inches or 0.04 metres. The hottest temperature has been 101 °F on July 1936 during a notorious Plains heat wave. Precipitation is lower in summer than in spring, declines further into the fall and winter as temperature cool.
Fall weather is variable in temperature as is the spring. As of the census of 2010, there were 3,124 people, 1,420 households, 828 families residing in the city; the population density was 1,516.5 inhabitants per square mile. There were 1,694 housing units at an average density of 822.3 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 94.6% White, 0.3% African American, 2.0% Native American, 0.4% Asian, 0.4% from other races, 2.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.9% of the population. There were 1,420 households of which 27.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.6% were married couples living together, 13.0% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.7% had a male householder with no wife present, 41.7% were non-families. 35.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.8% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.19 and the average family size was 2.82. The median age in the city was 40.5 y
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was an American statesman and lawyer who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the nation through the American Civil War, its bloodiest war and its greatest moral and political crisis, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, modernized the U. S. economy. Born in Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the frontier in a poor family. Self-educated, he became Whig Party leader, state legislator and Congressman, he left government to resume his law practice, but angered by the success of Democrats in opening the prairie lands to slavery, reentered politics in 1854. He became a leader in the new Republican Party and gained national attention in 1858 for debating and losing to national Democratic leader Stephen A. Douglas in a Senate campaign, he ran for President in 1860, sweeping the North and winning. Southern pro-slavery elements took his win as proof that the North was rejecting the Constitutional rights of Southern states to practice slavery.
They began the process of seceding from the union. To secure its independence, the new Confederate States of America fired on Fort Sumter, one of the few U. S. forts in the South. Lincoln called up volunteers and militia to restore the Union; as the leader of the moderate faction of the Republican Party, Lincoln confronted Radical Republicans, who demanded harsher treatment of the South. Lincoln fought the factions by pitting them against each other, by distributing political patronage, by appealing to the American people, his Gettysburg Address became an iconic call for nationalism, equal rights and democracy. He suspended habeas corpus, he averted British intervention by defusing the Trent Affair. Lincoln supervised the war effort, including the selection of generals and the naval blockade that shut down the South's trade; as the war progressed, he maneuvered to end slavery, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Lincoln managed his own re-election campaign, he sought to reconcile his damaged nation by avoiding retribution against the secessionists.
A few days after the Battle of Appomattox Court House, he was shot by John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, on April 14, 1865, died the following day. Abraham Lincoln is remembered as the United States' martyr hero, he is ranked both by scholars and the public as among the greatest U. S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, as the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville, Kentucky, he was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk, to its namesake Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638. Samuel's grandson and great-grandson began the family's westward migration, passing through New Jersey and Virginia. Lincoln's paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Kentucky, in the 1780s. Captain Lincoln was killed in an Indian raid in 1786, his children, including eight-year-old Thomas, Abraham's father, witnessed the attack.
Thomas worked at odd jobs in Kentucky and in Tennessee, before settling with members of his family in Hardin County, Kentucky, in the early 1800s. Lincoln's mother, Nancy, is assumed to have been the daughter of Lucy Hanks, although no record documents this. Thomas and Nancy married on June 12, 1806, in Washington County, moved to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, they produced three children: Sarah, born on February 10, 1807. Thomas Lincoln leased farms in Kentucky. Thomas became embroiled in legal disputes, lost all but 200 acres of his land in court disputes over property titles. In 1816, the family moved to Indiana, where the survey process was more reliable and land titles were more secure. Indiana was a "free" territory, they settled in an "unbroken forest" in Hurricane Township, Perry County. In 1860, Lincoln noted that the family's move to Indiana was "partly on account of slavery", but due to land title difficulties. In Kentucky and Indiana, Thomas worked as a farmer and carpenter, he owned farms, town lots and livestock, paid taxes, sat on juries, appraised estates, served on country slave patrols, guarded prisoners.
Thomas and Nancy were members of a Separate Baptists church, which forbade alcohol and slavery. Overcoming financial challenges, Thomas obtained clear title to 80 acres of land in what became known as the Little Pigeon Creek Community. On October 5, 1818, Nancy Lincoln died of milk sickness, leaving 11-year-old Sarah in charge of a household that included her father, 9-year-old Abraham, Dennis Hanks, Nancy's 19-year-old orphaned cousin; those who knew Lincoln recalled that he was distraught over his sister's death on January 20, 1828, while giving birth to a stillborn son. On December 2, 1819, Thomas married Sarah "Sally" Bush Johnston, a widow from Elizabethtown, with three children of her own. Abraham became close to his stepmother, whom he referred t
Deadwood, South Dakota
Deadwood is a city in South Dakota, United States, the county seat of Lawrence County. It was named by early settlers after the dead trees found in its gulch; the city had its heyday from 1876 to 1879, after gold deposits had been discovered there, leading to the Black Hills Gold Rush. At its height, the city had a population of 5,000, attracted larger-than-life Old West figures including Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. In 2010, the population was 1,270 according to the 2010 census; the entire city has been designated as a National Historic Landmark District, for its well-preserved Gold Rush-era architecture. The settlement of Deadwood began illegally in the 1870s on land, granted to the Lakota people in the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie; the treaty had guaranteed ownership of the Black Hills to the Lakota people, who considered this area to be sacred. The squatters led to numerous land disputes, several of which reached the United States Supreme Court. Everything changed after Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an expedition into the Black Hills and announced the discovery of gold in 1874 on French Creek near present-day Custer, South Dakota.
This announcement was a catalyst for the Black Hills Gold Rush, miners and entrepreneurs swept into the area. They created the new and lawless town of Deadwood, which reached a population of around 5,000. In early 1876, frontiersman Charlie Utter and his brother Steve led a wagon train to Deadwood containing what they believed were needed commodities to bolster business; the numerous gamblers and prostitutes staffed several profitable ventures. Madame Mustache and Dirty Em were on the wagon train and set up shop in what was referred to as Deadwood Gulch. Demand for women was high by the miners and the business of prostitution proved to have a good market. Madam Dora DuFran became the most profitable brothel owner in Deadwood followed by Madam Mollie Johnson. Deadwood became known for its lawlessness; the town attained further notoriety when gunman Wild Bill Hickok was killed on August 2, 1876. Both he and Calamity Jane were buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery, as were less notable figures such as Seth Bullock.
Hickok's murderer, Jack McCall, was prosecuted twice, despite the U. S. Constitution's prohibition against double jeopardy; because Deadwood was an illegal town in Indian Territory, non-native civil authorities lacked the jurisdiction to prosecute McCall. McCall's trial was moved to a Dakota Territory court, where he was found guilty of murder and hanged; as the economy changed from gold panning to deep mining, the individual miners went elsewhere or began to work in other fields. Deadwood lost some of its rough and rowdy character, began to develop into a prosperous town, but beginning August 12, 1876, a smallpox epidemic swept through. So many persons fell ill. In 1876, General George Crook pursued the Sioux Indians from the Battle of Little Big Horn on an expedition that ended in Deadwood in early September and is known as the Horsemeat March; the same month, businessman Tom Miller opened the Bella Union Saloon. Al Swearengen, who controlled the opium trade, opened a saloon called the Gem Variety Theater on April 7, 1877.
The saloon burned down and was rebuilt in 1879. When it burned down again in 1899, Swearengen left town; the Homestake Mine in nearby Lead was established in October 1877. It operated for more than a century, becoming the longest continuously operating gold mine in the United States. Gold mining operations did not cease until 2002; the mine has been open for visiting by tourists. On September 26, 1879, a fire devastated Deadwood, destroying more than three hundred buildings and consuming the belongings of many inhabitants. Many of the newly impoverished left town to start again elsewere. Thomas Edison demonstrated the incandescent lamp in New Jersey in 1879. Judge Squire P. Romans took a gamble and founded the "Pilcher Electric Light Company of Deadwood" on September 17, 1883, he ordered an Edison wiring and 15 incandescent lights with globes. After delays the equipment arrived without the globes. Romans had been advertising an event to show off the new lights, decided to continue with the lighting, a success.
His company grew. Deadwood had electricity service fewer than four years after Edison invented it, less than a year after commercial service was started in Roselle, New Jersey, around the same time that many larger cities around the country established the service. A narrow-gauge railroad, the Deadwood Central Railroad, was founded by resident J. K. P. Miller and his associates in 1888, in order to serve their mining interests; the railroad was purchased by the Chicago and Quincy Railroad in 1893. A portion of the railroad between Deadwood and Lead was electrified in 1902 for operation as an interurban passenger system, which operated until 1924; the railroad was abandoned in 1930, apart from a portion from Kirk to Fantail Junction, converted to standard gauge. The remaining section was abandoned by the successor Burlington Northern Railroad in 1984; some of the other early town residents and frequent visitors included E. B. Farnum, Charlie Utter, Sol Star, Martha Bullock, A. W. Merrick, Samuel Fields, Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy, the Reverend Henry Weston Smith, Aaron Dunn.
The gold rush attracted Chinese immigrants to the area. Their population peaked at 250. A few engaged in mining. A Chinese quarter arose on Main Street, as there were no restrictions on foreign property ownership in Dakota Territory, a high level of tolerance of differen
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. He had served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. Bush was born in New Haven and grew up in Texas. After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, he worked in the oil industry. Bush married Laura Welch in 1977 and unsuccessfully ran for the U. S. House of Representatives shortly thereafter, he co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richards in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. Bush was elected President of the United States in 2000 when he defeated Democratic incumbent Vice President Al Gore after a close and controversial win that involved a stopped recount in Florida, he became the fourth person to be elected president while receiving fewer popular votes than his opponent. Bush is a member of a prominent political family and is the eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States.
He is only the second president to assume the nation's highest office after his father, following the footsteps of John Adams and his son, John Quincy Adams. His brother Jeb Bush, a former Governor of Florida, was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 presidential election, his paternal grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U. S. Senator from Connecticut; the September 11 terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bush's first term. Bush responded with what became known as the Bush Doctrine: launching a "War on Terror", an international military campaign that included the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and the Iraq War in 2003, he signed into law broad tax cuts, the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, Medicare prescription drug benefits for seniors, funding for the AIDS relief program known as PEPFAR. His tenure included national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, torture. In the 2004 presidential race, Bush defeated Democratic Senator John Kerry in another close election.
After his re-election, Bush received heated criticism from across the political spectrum for his handling of the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, other challenges. Amid this criticism, the Democratic Party regained control of Congress in the 2006 elections. In December 2007, the United States entered its longest post-World War II recession referred to as the "Great Recession", prompting the Bush administration to obtain congressional passage of multiple economic programs intended to preserve the country's financial system. Nationally, Bush was both one of the most popular and unpopular U. S. presidents in history, having received the highest recorded presidential approval ratings in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, as well as one of the lowest approval ratings during the 2008 financial crisis. Bush finished his term in office in 2009 and returned to Texas, where he had purchased a home in Dallas. In 2010, he published Decision Points, his presidential library was opened in 2013. His presidency has been ranked among the worst in historians' polls that were published in the late 2000s and 2010s.
However, his favorability ratings with the public have improved after leaving office. George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, at Yale–New Haven Hospital in New Haven, while his father was a student at Yale, he was his wife, Barbara Pierce. He was raised in Midland and Houston, with four siblings, Neil and Dorothy. Another younger sister, died from leukemia at the age of three in 1953, his grandfather, Prescott Bush, was a U. S. Senator from Connecticut, his father was Ronald Reagan's vice president from 1981 to 1989 and the 41st U. S. president from 1989 to 1993. Bush has English and some German ancestry, along with more distant Dutch, Irish and Scottish roots. Bush attended public schools in Midland, until the family moved to Houston after he had completed seventh grade, he spent two years at The Kinkaid School, a prep school in Piney Point Village in the Houston area. Bush attended high school at Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Andover, where he played baseball and was the head cheerleader during his senior year.
He attended Yale University from 1964 to 1968. During this time, he was a cheerleader and a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon, serving as the president of the fraternity during his senior year. Bush became a member of the Skull and Bones society as a senior. Bush was a rugby union player and was on Yale's 1st XV, he characterized himself as an average student. His GPA during his first three years at Yale was 77, he had a similar average under a nonnumeric rating system in his final year. In the fall of 1973, Bush entered Harvard Business School, he graduated in 1975 with an MBA degree. He is the only U. S. president to have earned an MBA. Bush was engaged to Cathryn Lee Wolfman in 1967, but the engagement fizzled out. Bush and Wolfman remained on good terms after the end of the relationship. While Bush was at a backyard barbecue in 1977, friends introduced him to Laura Welch, a schoolteacher and librarian. After a three-month courtship, she accepted his marriage proposal and they wed on November 5 of that year.
The couple settled in Texas. Bush left his family's Episcopal Church to join his wife's United Methodist Church. On November 25, 1981, Laura Bush gave birth to fraternal twin daughters and Jenna. Prior to getting married, Bush struggled with multiple episodes of alcohol abuse. In one instance on September 4, 1976, he was pulled over near his fami
Houston
Houston is the most populous city in the U. S. state of Texas and the fourth most populous city in the United States, with a census-estimated population of 2.312 million in 2017. It is the most populous city in the Southern United States and on the Gulf Coast of the United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the seat of Harris County and the principal city of the Greater Houston metropolitan area, the fifth most populous metropolitan statistical area in the United States and the second most populous in Texas after the Dallas-Fort Worth MSA. With a total area of 627 square miles, Houston is the eighth most expansive city in the United States, it is the largest city in the United States by total area, whose government is not consolidated with that of a county or borough. Though in Harris County, small portions of the city extend into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties. Houston was founded by land speculators on August 30, 1836, at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou and incorporated as a city on June 5, 1837.
The city is named after former General Sam Houston, president of the Republic of Texas and had won Texas' independence from Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto 25 miles east of Allen's Landing. After serving as the capital of the Texas Republic in the late 1830s, Houston grew 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, the Texas oil boom. In the mid-20th century, Houston's economy diversified as it became home to the Texas Medical Center—the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the Mission Control Center is located. Houston's economy has a broad industrial base in energy, manufacturing and transportation.
Leading in healthcare sectors and building oilfield equipment, Houston has the second most Fortune 500 headquarters of any U. S. municipality within its city limits. The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in international waterborne tonnage handled and second in total cargo tonnage handled. Nicknamed the "Space City", Houston is a global city, with strengths in culture and research; the city has a population from various ethnic and religious backgrounds and a large and growing international community. Houston is the most diverse metropolitan area in Texas and has been described as the most racially and ethnically diverse major metropolis in the U. S, it is home to many cultural institutions and exhibits, which attract more than 7 million visitors a year to the Museum District. Houston has an active visual and performing arts scene in the Theater District and offers year-round resident companies in all major performing arts; the Allen brothers—Augustus Chapman and John Kirby—explored town sites on Buffalo Bayou and Galveston Bay.
According to historian David McComb, "he brothers, on August 26, 1836, bought from Elizabeth E. Parrott, wife of T. F. L. Parrott and widow of John Austin, the south half of the lower league granted to her by her late husband, they paid $5,000 total, but only $1,000 of this in cash. They lobbied the Republic of Texas Congress to designate Houston as the temporary capital, agreeing to provide the new government with a capital building. About a dozen persons resided in the town at the beginning of 1837, but that number grew to about 1,500 by the time the Texas Congress convened in Houston for the first time that May. Houston was granted incorporation with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor. In the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County. In 1839, the Republic of Texas relocated its capital to Austin; the town suffered another setback that year when a yellow fever epidemic claimed about one life out of every eight residents. Yet it persisted as a commercial center, forming a symbiosis with Galveston.
Landlocked farmers brought their produce to Houston, using Buffalo Bayou to gain access to Galveston and the Gulf of Mexico. Houston merchants profited from selling staples to farmers and shipping the farmers' produce to Galveston; the great majority of slaves in Texas came with their owners from the older slave states. Sizable numbers, came through the domestic slave trade. New Orleans was the center of this trade in the Deep South. Thousands of enslaved blacks lived near the city before the American Civil War. Many of them near the city worked on sugar and cotton plantations, while most of those in the city limits had domestic and artisan jobs. In 1840, the community established a chamber of commerce in part to promote shipping and navigation at the newly created port on Buffalo Bayou. By 1860, Houston had emerged as a commercial and railroad hub for the export of cotton. Railroad spurs from the Texas inland converged in Houston, where they met rail lines to the ports of Galveston and Beaumont.
During the American Civil War, Houston served as a headquarters for General John Magruder, who used the city as an organization point for the Battle of Galveston. After the Civil War, Houston businessmen initia
U.S. Route 85
U. S. Route 85 is a 1,479-mile-long north–south United States Highway that travels in the Mountain and Northern Plains states of the United States; the southern terminus of the highway is at the Mexican border in El Paso, connecting with Mexican Federal Highway 45. The northern terminus is at the Canadian border in Fortuna, North Dakota, where the route continues north as Saskatchewan Highway 35; the highway route is part of the CanAm Highway. Sections of US 85 are considered part of the Theodore Roosevelt Expressway; the highway passes through Texas, New Mexico, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota. From Anthony, Texas to Fountain, Colorado, US-85 shares its alignment with interstate routes and is not signed. US 85 in Texas begins at the Mexico–US border with US 62 and travels north through El Paso, beginning at the Santa Fe Street Bridge, following Santa Fe Street Paisano Drive westward, along the Rio Grande until Paisano Drive ends where it joins with Interstate 10, about 14 miles before both reach the New Mexico border.
The route is concurrent with I-10 for the remainder of its route within Texas. The original route of US 85 in Texas had the highway concurrent with Doniphan Drive, parallelling the Atchison and Santa Fe Railway through the Mesilla Valley communities of Canutillo and Anthony before crossing the Texas/New Mexico state line in Anthony, New Mexico following the road, now New Mexico State Road 478 up the Mesilla Valley to Las Cruces; this route is marked as Texas State Highway 20 north of the intersection with Mesa Street/Country Club Drive. The unsigned route of US 85 through New Mexico exists only on paper to maintain continuity with signed sections in Colorado and Texas. Except for a 4-mile segment through Las Vegas, US 85 in New Mexico is concurrent with Interstate Routes. For the first 20 miles it shares its route with I-10 continues north for the remainder of its length in New Mexico concurrent with I-25. US-85 was de-signed in segments between 1990 as I-25 was built through the state. I-25 between Bernalillo and a point just south of Santa Fe was built over the old US 85 alignment.
I-25 was built directly over US 85 from east of Santa Fe to Las Vegas and from US 64 to the Colorado border at Raton Pass. At one point, the route went along the historic El Camino Real; the original route from Anthony to Las Cruces is now signed as NM 478. The original route from Las Cruces to Hatch is now signed as NM 185. For concurrencies of interstate, US routes, routes of different levels of significance, the New Mexico Department of Transportation's policy is to sign only the route of greater significance, while leaving the route of lesser significance unsigned. Consistent with this policy, NMDOT has removed US 85 from its route logs, but the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials retains US 85 on a concurrent alignment with I-10 and I-25 to maintain continuity with signed segments in Texas and Colorado. US 85 is not signed. US 85 leaves I-25 at Exit 128 and follows Santa Fe Avenue through Fountain before turning west onto Lake Avenue turning north following Nevada Avenue through Colorado Springs before rejoining I-25 at Exit 148.
Approaching the south side of Denver, US 85 again leaves I-25 at Exit 184. From there it heads north as a two lane rural highway, it becomes an expressway near Chatfield Lake and the southern Denver suburbs of Littleton and Englewood, where it's known as Santa Fe Drive. It continues north through Denver for a few miles before once again joining with I-25 at mile marker 207. There it heads north through downtown Denver. At exit 214, US 85 turns east and becomes a concurrency with I-70 and US 6 for about a mile where it exits with U. S. 6 and heads northeast through Commerce City. In just a few miles the US 6/US 85 concurrency merges with I-76 at mile marker 9, they travel concurrently for 3 miles until exit 12 when US 85 becomes an expressway and continues north out of the Denver area through Brighton. From there it parallels I-25 for about 75 miles passing through Fort Lupton, Evans and Eaton before crossing into Wyoming. US 85 enters Wyoming from Colorado 8 miles south of Cheyenne. In Cheyenne it joins with Business Route 87, a mile with I-180 until it meets with US 30.
The segment with I-180 is the only at-grade interstate route in the U. S. At exit 12, it joins with I-25 and US 87 in a concurrency for 5 miles until US 85 leaves at exit 17 and travels northeast towards Meriden. From there it heads north to Torrington, where it meets with US 26 and concurrencies for 10 miles until Lingle, 47 miles it meets US 20 and US 18 at Lusk, it shares the next 47 miles with US 18 and 33 miles meets US 16 near Newcastle. From here it is; the South Dakota section of US 85, with the exception of two concurrencies with US 14 Alternate and a concurrency with I-90, is defined at South Dakota Codified Laws § 31-4-181. US 85 enters the Black Hills from Wyoming and travels northeast until it meets with US
