Promise — and a few fibs — launched this city's destiny

On the occasion of the Houston Chronicle's 115th anniversary, we would like to proclaim that the story of Houston is a grand tale of unadulterated greatness, an inevitable unfolding of destiny, of hard-working heroes marching nobly toward glory. But that wouldn't be the truth.

The truth is: Houston has always been a mess.

In 1836, our founding brothers, Augustus and John Kirby Allen, rushed to the area right after the Battle of San Jacinto gave birth to an independent nation, the Republic of Texas. They calculated, correctly, that American fortune-seekers would hasten to this new country, this fresh frontier. And with that in mind, they aimed to make a real-estate fortune by selling land in a new settlement on Texas' eastern coast, near the site of the Battle of San Jacinto. They bought 8,850 acres of prairie swamp on Texas' Fever Coast.

Aug. 30, 1836 — the day we now celebrate as Houston's birthday — wasn't the date that the Allens landed, or the day they bought the land, or the day the cornerstone of the new city was laid. It was the day that the Allens' ads first appeared.

Yes: Houston sprang into being as ad copy.

"Well-developed," the first ad proclaimed the town. (The place was untouched by roads or infrastructure.) "Steamboats now run in this river," it said of Buffalo Bayou. (They didn't.) An illustration showed what looks like an Alpine village perched on the side of mountains. (No buildings. No mountains.) "Well-watered" was the truest thing about the ad: With 50 inches of annual rainfall, the place was, in fact, flood-prone.

Such is our city's foundation myth, its genesis. Houston was founded not on bedrock, but in a swamp of hope and lies, dreams and shameless promotion.

'Most miserable place'

The Allens, bless their developers' hearts, weren't content just to hawk their new city through ads. They also maneuvered to make their raw prairie acreage into the capital city of the new Republic of Texas.

Their first stroke of brilliance was the town's name: Its namesake, Sam Houston, was the hero of the Battle of San Jacinto, soon to be elected president of the shiny new republic.

Then there was J.K. Allen's spot in the legislature (he represented Nacogdoches); and there were well-placed gifts of land and promises of credit. With those, the brothers won the vote in the Texas Legislature. Suddenly, Houston could plausibly be described as a promising city-in-the-making: It would be Texas' seat of government, the capital of a young nation.

The rush was on. By Jan. 1, 1837, Houston had 12 residents and one log cabin; four months later, there were 1,500 people and 100 houses. It was a frontier boomtown with a reputation for drunkenness, brawling, prostitution and mud.

Legislators hated the place. Beastly hot and plagued by mosquitoes and yellow fever, Houston was rough even by Texas standards. "I find this the most miserable place in the world," wrote lawmaker Kelsey H. Douglass.

In 1839, legislators voted to move to a more civilized spot. And as quickly as Houston had boomed, it went bust.

Dreams as a port city

For about 60 years, this was just another East Texas town. During that period, most of Houston's history wasn't specific to Houston. Texas joined the U.S.; Texas fought in the Civil War; Emancipation came, followed by Reconstruction.

Without Texas' government, Houston's economy shifted mainly to trade - largely, trade of the cotton grown on the area's slave plantations. Little shallow-water steamboats carried the area's goods to Galveston, Texas' biggest port; and from there, ocean-going ships transported those goods to the world.

The men who profited from that trade worked to build the infrastructure that would let them do more business, make bigger profits: roads were paved and cleared; railroads criss-crossed the city; and Buffalo Bayou was cleared and dredged, allowing bigger ships.

Sometimes there was talk that, as a center of trade, Houston could rival Galveston Island. But that talk seemed like hopeful bluster, as dreamy as the Allen brothers' mountains: Galveston was older and more established, and the island actually touched the ocean. No, it didn't have Houston's railroads. But it also wasn't 60 miles inland, connected to the world by a twisty bayou.

Hurricane winds of change

At the beginning of the new century, two events — unforeseen, a few months apart, unconnected, and neither actually occurring in Houston — shaped the city we know.

The first was a disaster that immediately rocked the world. On Sept. 8, 1900, with nearly no warning, the Great Storm struck Galveston. This hurricane, estimated to have killed 8,000 of the 36,000 people who lived on the island, is still cited as the deadliest natural disaster in the U.S.

Texas' largest port lay in ruins, wreckage piled on its beaches, fortunes lost.

Galveston had plainly, obviously changed forever. Suddenly businessmen and shippers considered the island dangerous, and just as suddenly, Houston's inland port seemed more attractive. Houston rushed to take over Galveston's trade.

The second of those two great events wasn't, at the time, so obviously a game-changer. On Jan. 10, 1901, Spindletop erupted: an oil gusher such as the world had never seen, the well that would change the United States' relationship with cars and energy. Without planning or warning, Houston — a cotton-trading town — was suddenly poised to become the energy capital of the world.

It's easy to see all that in hindsight. But on Jan. 11, Spindletop was just another business story. The Houston Post gave it the prim headline "Oil Struck near Beaumont." It ran on Page 3.

The birth of the Chronicle

That brings us to our second creation story: the Houston Chronicle's own.

M.E. Foster, the Post reporter who traveled to Beaumont to cover Spindletop, invested $30, a week's pay, in the well. A week later, he sold his stake for $5,000 — more than three times his annual salary.

Foster had been unhappy at the Post, and he used his windfall, and the investment of friends, to launch his own newspaper. As a business proposition, it hardly seemed a sure thing: Houston, a town of only 44,000 people, already had two established dailies. It wasn't clear that a third could survive.

But Foster carved out a place. On Oct. 14, 1901, the Houston Chronicle published its first edition.

It was an afternoon paper that sold for 2 cents a copy — cheaper than its competitors. Unlike them, it accepted no front-page ads. And its aggressive coverage soon won fans.

Oil money made possible a newspaperman's dream: To cover this swamp city as it lurched from one big thing to the next. To sift out truth from the lies that are the place's birthright. To find bedrock in a place where it may not even exist.

One hundred and fifteen years later, Houston remains a great news town.