Inside World Trade

The Port of Houston Story: How the Bayou City dug its way to the Gulf

This is the first in a series examining various aspects of international trade, policies and procedures for importing goods into the U.S., and free trade agreements

Houston is the fourth largest city in the U.S., a sprawling inland metropolis situated on flat grassland, known for its freeways, sports stadiums, rodeo, the oil business, and the Texas Medical Center. So it may come as a surprise to many that Houston has a large seaport, the third largest in the U.S. and the 10th largest in the world.

How can a city 50 miles inland from Galveston have a seaport? The Allen brothers, who founded Houston, actually envisioned it as a port town along the banks of Buffalo Bayou. In 1837 they proved the Bayou was navigable when a small steamship called the Laura made a five-and-a-half mile trip up the bayou. Eventually, cotton was loaded onto steamships at Allen's Landing and transported up the bayou to Galveston, where it was loaded onto ships for export.

At that time Galveston was the main port for the import and export trade. However, after the storm of 1900 devastated Galveston, the notion that Houston could become a major port began to gain support in the Texas Legislature. In 1909, with the help of federal funds, a Navigation District was formed to oversee the development of port facilities and wharves along Buffalo Bayou.

In the next five years the Houston Ship Channel was formed by deepening and widening the bayou to accommodate large ocean-going vessels. A turning basin was created eight miles from downtown where the city of Harrisburg was once located. Here ships docked at public wharves, then turned around to head back down the channel. Over the next fifty years the ship channel received additional widening and dredging, and today it is a 25 mile long channel with public and private port facilities stretching all the way to Galveston Bay.

In 1971 the Port of Houston Authority was created to oversee the Houston Ship Channel and develop new projects. It owns and operates the public facilities along the channel such as the Turning Basin Terminal, the Barbours Cut Container Terminal, and the Jacintoport Terminal. The Authority is in the process of building the Bayport Container and Cruise Terminal, which will have a total of seven container berths when it is completed.

According to the Port Authority the Port of Houston is first in the U.S. in foreign tonnage, second in overall tonnage, and has the second largest petrochemical complex in the world. In 2007 the Port handled 215 million tons of cargo at 150 public and private terminals. Over 7,000 vessels from all parts of the globe navigate their way through the Houston Ship Channel annually.

Many of these are container ships which dock at the Barbours Cut Terminal at Morgan's Point, on the northwest shore of Galveston Bay. Here overhead cranes lift containers off the ships and stack them in storage yards for eventual transporting to the consignee. Containers are 20' or 40' steel boxes that are placed on the deck of a ship to transport a variety of imported products. They may contain marble slabs, food, textiles, toys, refrigerated frozen beef, machine parts, valves, furniture, and many other items made in foreign countries for sale in the U.S. market.

Tons of steel coils and pipes are unloaded from the holds of ships at turning basin wharves and placed on flatbed trucks. Oil and chemical cargos are discharged at refineries along the channel. The Port has become a distribution center for retailers who send their imports to stores in the Midwest and South. WalMart Stores, Inc. built a 4-million-square-foot distribution center next to the port in 2005. Regardless of the method of unloading or distribution, all imported cargo must be cleared for entry into U.S. commerce by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Port of Houston also has a high volume of export trade in such commodities as grain, rice, and chemicals. Recently, exports of U.S. made machinery and steel products to Singapore and agricultural products to Mexico, Brazil and Spain have been on the rise, mainly driven by a decline in the dollar.

From its modest beginnings as a bayou port to the modern seaport of today, Houston owes much of its economic growth to its port. The Allen brothers had more than a hunch when they declared that Houston would someday prosper because of its navigable bayou. The Port of Houston provided 785,049 jobs last year by ship channel-related businesses throughout Texas, while providing $117.6 billion in statewide economic impact, according to the Port Authority's figures. It has made Houston an international city with 87 foreign consulates, 31 international chambers of commerce, 21 foreign banks and 3000 international firms.

While most Houstonians never see a vessel or a tugboat in their day-to-day activities, they will see and experience the impact of global trade on their lives every day.

Frances Allday was a specialist in commercial trade with U.S. Customs and Border Protection for 25 years