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Buffalo Bayou and Lower White Oak Bayou Federal Flood Damage Reduction and Ecosystem Restoration study
A Brief Historical Review of Bayou Development and Flood Damage Reduction Measures
This 1929 photograph from the Houston Chronicle demonstrates that flooding problems faced by Harris County citizens in the twenty-first century have a long, familiar-looking history. With a landscape almost as flat as an ironing board and with nearly four inches of rainfall every month, the Houston area has always been prone to flooding. Intersecting in the heart of the Bayou City, Buffalo and White Oak bayous have played central roles in the history of Harris County flooding.
The District has prepared a narrative and a presentation on the development of Buffalo Bayou and lower White Oak Bayou, and flood damage reduction.
> See also other PDFs of source documents related to Houston’s flooding history.
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1821–1845: Early Development of Houston and Harris County
In the 1820s, Stephen F. Austin encouraged American settlers to come to Texas. The west side of Galveston Island offered the only harbor deep enough for ocean-going ships. Buffalo Bayou, pointing straight at the rich cotton plantations along the Brazos River, provided the easiest way for farmers to get their crops loaded on boats going to Galveston, where shipment to New York and London could be obtained.
The Allen brothers founded Houston at the "head of navigation" on Buffalo Bayou in 1836, and their advertisement for The Town of Houston was published months before the first steamboat visited. Their many exaggerations set a very high standard for generations of Houston realtors and developers who followed them.
Notes on Texas, written by an anonymous visitor from Ohio, provides an excellent description of Houston, the prairies, and the bayous in 1837. Disagreeing with the Allen brothers, this writer found Buffalo Bayou to be "dangerous for steamboat navigation-the difficulties consisting of obstructions in the bed of the bayou, overhanging trees, and especially in the narrowness of the stream."
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1846–1899: Houston Competes with Galveston
The sketch above is of the 1871 Corps of Engineers map of Buffalo Bayou from Harrisburg to Houston, and it shows the navigation difficulties presented by the channel's natural twists and turns. Galveston reigned as the largest city in Texas during this time, but Houston countered the rival city's port advantages by claiming the lion's share of the railroad lines.
Author and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted described Houston in his 1857 Journey through Texas. As he approached the town overland from the Brazos River, the author noted the flat prairies, suggesting flooding problems in the Bayou City's future. Two decades later, Edward King visited a more prosperous Houston, which he described in his book The Great South. King provided illustrations and seemed much more impressed than Olmsted.
In 1879, shortly after King’s visit, the Bayou City suffered the worst flood in its history. The New York Times article "Floods in Texas" focused on Houston, where "the water rose 18 feet in three hours and carried away all the railroad bridges and many warehouses."
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1900–1909: Galveston Storm, Spindletop, and Ship Channel
The photograph above shows only half of the widespread oil derricks at Goose Creek in the early twentieth century. Three events during this time directed Houston toward its prominence in the petroleum industry: 1) The great hurricane in 1900 destroyed most of Galveston; 2) the gusher at Spindletop in 1901 launched the Texas oil industry, while Galveston was still flattened and 3) the United States government and Houston agreed to split the cost of transforming Buffalo Bayou into the Houston Ship Channel.
The New York Times published an article about the 1900 hurricane that focused on the damage to Houston because nothing was heard yet from the isolated Galveston. A later article on rural storm damage reported towns in ruins and 10,000 dead cattle.
Congressman Thomas Ball, the "father of the ship channel," wrote an illustrated account of Houston's endless campaign to deepen and widen Buffalo Bayou. The congressman also was responsible for having a railroad routed through the little town of Peck, Texas, which renamed itself Tomball.
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1910–1929: Booming Business, Rapid Urbanization, Increasing Damage
In 1912, the city limits of Houston formed an almost perfect four-mile square. The map above shows early evidence of the city’s famous sprawl: 1) development north and south of the Turning Basin; 2) Rice Institute in the southwest boondocks, but still on Main Street; 3) Houston Heights in the northwest; and 4) the confluence of Buffalo and White Oak Bayous in the increasingly congested downtown. The booster mentality driving the sprawl can be seen in a 1912 Houston article in The Texas Magazine.
Construction in natural floodplains—largely undefined and poorly understood at this time—led to frequent, major flood damage throughout the 1910s and 20s. This process culminated in the great flood of 1929. A page of water damage photographs from the Houston Chronicle demonstrates the wide scope of this disaster.
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1930–1939: Great Flood of 1935 and Creation of HCFCD
Still unconvinced of the need for a flood damage reduction plan, Houston and Harris County taxpayers failed to take action until the unprecedented flood destruction in 1935. Wild River, a "photographic essay" assembled by city and county officials with assistance from the Houston Chamber of Commerce, tells the story of the 1935 flood in detail.
In response to the 1935 Houston flood and dozens of similar disasters throughout the United States, Congress passed the Federal Flood Control Act of 1936. This law provided federal funding for flood damage reduction programs and assigned oversight responsibility for those programs to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps insisted on working with a single local agency, and Wild River served as a successful petition to the Texas state legislature requesting the creation of the Harris County Flood Control District.
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1940–1949: First Project Plan, Barker and Addicks Reservoirs, World War II
Established in 1937, the District joined with the Corps of Engineers in developing the first comprehensive flood control plan for Harris County. The 1940 Project Plan, a bold scheme to route water around, rather than through, Houston, included three reservoirs and two long diversion canals.
World War II interrupted construction. Barker and Addicks Reservoirs were completed in the late 1940s, but Houston’s booming population growth and development made the original plan too expensive. Worse still, the 1940 plan no longer met the flood damage reduction needs of Harris County and its burgeoning Bayou City.
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1950–1975: Postwar Boom Days and Wild River II
The photograph above of White Oak Bayou demonstrates the kind of flood damage reduction construction projects often associated with the 1950s and 60s. Effective and efficient, but environmentally cold, channelization work like this on White Oak and on Brays Bayous resulted from revision of the 1940 Project Plan. Convinced that population growth in Houston and Harris County had made the original plan obsolete, the District petitioned Congress for a new plan and additional financial help. To bolster the county’s case, the District prepared a 1951 revised version of Wild River describing the rapid growth of the Houston area and the struggle with floods throughout the 1940s.
In 1954, Congress approved the new flood damage reduction plan, but by the 1960s, many residents along Buffalo Bayou objected to channelization plans for aesthetic and environmental reasons. After completion of the White Oak and Brays projects, work on the 1954 plan stopped.
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1976–1999: Environmental Restraints and Engineering Innovation
The map above shows the completion status of the work authorized in the 1954 Project Plan. The green-colored portion of Buffalo Bayou was not channelized because of concerns expressed by the Buffalo Bayou residents in the 1960s proved to be part of a national move toward environmental awareness on the part of Americans in general. Often called the "Era of Limits," the 1970s changed the way the District and the Corps of Engineers approached flood damage reduction projects. Working within the guidelines of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Projects began incorporating the public’s newfound environmental sensitivity into the county’s plans for channel improvement.
The 1960s and 70s also gave birth to the National Flood Insurance Program, offering financial protection to prudent property owners. This program also provided new risk assessment standards and the first detailed floodplain maps.
The extraordinary growth of Houston during these decades led to ever greater flood damage-more homes and businesses built in harm's way—and 1979 proved to be a record year, with seven separate flood events that prompted a countywide flood control conference in 1980. Former Harris County Flood Control District Director Jim Green's address at the conference provided an excellent "state of the District" summary. Later that year, Green's proposal to the Commissioners Court was adopted as Harris County's first Stormwater Management Policy.
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21st Century
The aerial view above of Arthur Storey Park provides a picture of both the present and the future of flood damage reduction efforts in Harris County. The 1980 stormwater policy change enabled the District to move away from relying solely on channelization in its flood damage reduction efforts. Through innovative use of stormwater detention basins and wetland mitigation measures, the District is creating environmentally sound projects like linear stormwater detention along Buffalo Bayou, also known as Terry Hershey Park, and the Greens Bayou Wetlands Mitigation Bank.
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Buffalo Bayou & Lower White Oak Bayou Federal Flood Damage Reduction and Ecosystem Restoration Study
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