The Astrodome opened on April 9, 1965, as the first fully enclosed, air-conditioned multi-purpose stadium ever built. Engineers could not keep natural grass alive without sunlight, so they replaced the grass with an artificial playing surface — the first of its kind in major sports. The Astrodome sat 54,000, hosted rodeo, baseball, and football, and was promptly nicknamed the Eighth Wonder of the World — a phrase Houstonians apply with some pride and no shortage of irony. Houston has no zoning code, making it the only major American city where a refinery can sit next to a townhouse by right. That absence of zoning produced the sprawling, layered, improvised city that Houston is: some 670 square miles, the fourth-largest city in the United States, a port handling more foreign tonnage than any other in the country.
The oil era arrived on January 10, 1901, when the Lucas No. 1 gusher at Spindletop blew in near Beaumont with a roar audible miles away. Within a year East Texas had more active wells than any field on earth, and Houston — the nearest city with a railroad, a port, and lawyers — became the place where oil got refined, financed, and shipped. The Houston Ship Channel, completed in November 1914 after decades of dredging fifty miles from downtown to the Gulf of Mexico, turned a slow inland bayou into one of the busiest deep-water ports in the world. Roughnecks and wildcatters, refineries and pipelines: the energy capital of the world had found its anchor. By the mid-century Houston was booming — suburban neighborhoods spreading outward, freeways threading in every direction, and the Texas Medical Center taking shape as what would become the largest medical complex on earth.
Why People Visit Houston Texas
Houston offers space heritage, Texas Revolution history, world-class museums, bayou parks, and one of the most diverse food scenes in the country. Visitors come for Mission Control and the San Jacinto battleground, the museum district and the bayou trails, the rodeo in March, and the simple scale of a city that runs from downtown skyline to ship channel to Gulf Coast. It is sprawling, layered, and unlike anywhere else in America.
