Cities In Texas That Start With H

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Kay Keeton, Editor in Chief

Cities in Texas that Start with H are plentiful. Having lived and worked in many places in Texas I have come to understand and appreciate the differences and similarities that I have found in the different regions and individual cities throughout our great state. The diversity of Houston, the hustle and bustle of Dallas, and the laid-back atmosphere of Austin, just to name a few, are all things that I have felt fortunate to have experienced.

Texas is full of hard-working, friendly, down-to-earth people. Today we continue our exploration of some of these Texas cities. Some I have been to and some I have not, but they all provide a rich history that makes our great state what it is. 

Top Texas cities that start with H

Many cities in Texas start with an H,  so we’ve put together a short list of our favorite ’H’ Texas cities.

• Houston
• Harlingen
• Huntsville
• Hurst

Houston

Houston is the most populous city in Texas and the fourth most populous city in the United States. It is situated along the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston Bay. Houston is located mostly in Harris county with small portions extending into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties. The city covers 627 square miles.

The city of Houston began on August 30, 1836, When Augustus Chapman Allen ran an advertisement in the Telegraph and Texas Register for the “Town of Houston”. Just months after Texas won its independence from Mexico in the Battle of San Jacinto, Augustus and his brother John K. Allen purchased 6,642 acres near the headwaters of Buffalo Bayou.

The Allen brothers named their town after Sam Houston and persuaded the Texas Congress to designate the site as the temporary capital of the new Republic of Texas. On January 1, 1837, there were twelve residents in the town and one log cabin. Four months later, there were 1500 people and 100 houses. Houston was incorporated on June 5, 1837, and the town became the county seat of Harrisburg county that same year. Harrisburg county was renamed Harris county two years later.

Also in 1839, the Texas government left Houston for Austin. Like many towns of the time, their economy relied on agriculture as its driving force. Oceangoing ships brought to Galveston cargoes of cloth, flour whiskey, gunpowder, iron castings, lead, coffee, sugar, nails, books, and hundreds of little items. Small river steamships took the goods from Galveston to Houston.

Today Houston has an estimated population of 2,304, 580. Houston’s economy includes industries like energy, manufacturing, aeronautics, transportation, and healthcare. 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 overall.

Harlingen

Harlingen is located at the intersection of U.S. Highways 77 and 83, in northwestern Cameron County. The town was founded in 1904 by Lon C. Hill., on the north bank of the Arroyo Colorado. The town is named after a city in Holland. Harlingen was incorporated on April 15, 1910, with a population of 1,126 people. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, it was an agrarian community with vegetables and cotton as the major crops.

By 1950 the population was around 23,00.  Harlingen has had its ups and downs population-wise. Two things were instrumental to the development of Harlingen. One was the railroad. Hill selected the site for the new town because it was on St. Louis, Brownsville, and the Mexican rail line. It was the railroad that gave the city two of its nicknames. One was “All out rattlesnake junction”. Later on, the Texas Rangers built a headquarters near the track. The men there would gather for target practice which gave rise to the name “Six shooter junction”.

Water was the second key thing to the development of the region. The town is eight feet lower than the Rio Grande which allows a natural flow of water into their main reservoir, City Lake. Hill designated several spaces for parkland and today Harlingen boasts an extensive parks system with more than twenty-five parks, a tribute to Hill’s vision.

After a slight decline in the 1930s with the great depression, the city was forever changed after the start of World War II. In Harlingen, this was due largely to the creation of an aerial gunnery school at Harlingen Air Field. Harlingen Air Field closed in 1946 but was reactivated in 1952 as Harlingen Air Force Base. The 1940s and 1950s saw a great deal of new growth and development, spurred by HAFB and a wave of post-war prosperity. Today the city has a population of 71,829.

Huntsville

Huntsville is located at the junction of Interstate Highways 45 and 75, U.S. Highway 190, and Texas highways 19 and 30. It is the county seat of Walker county and is situated in the approximate center of the county. It was founded around 1835 or 1836 by Pleasant and Ephraim Gray and was named for the former home of the Gray family in Huntsville, Alabama. Huntsville was the home of many prominent early Texans such as Sam Houston, Samuel McKinney, and others.

Huntsville became the site of the new Texas State Penitentiary, established by the legislature in 1847. The prison received its first convict on October 1, 1849. The following year Huntsville lost out to Austin in an election to choose the state capitol. Located in the Sam Houston National Forest is the Huntsville State Park. The park is great for fishing, boating, horseback riding or just going on a hike or nature walk. Today Huntsville is home to 45,941 people. Sam Houston State University is located in Huntsville.

Hurst

Hurst is just north of Fort Worth on State Highways 121 and 10. It is located to the north of the West Fork of the Trinity River in the northeastern portion of Tarrant County. Families from Tennessee and Indiana arrived in the 1840s and 1850s. One of these was William J. Hurst and his family. In 1903, the Rock Island rail line was built through the area. William Hurst donated land in exchange for a depot named after him.

The area’s agricultural products including cotton, grain, and cattle were not enough to make the train stop regularly. By 1940, Hurst had about 100 people. In the late 1940s, Hurst was quickly becoming a bedroom community for Fort Worth. In 1951 Bell Aircraft (Helicopter) announced it would build a plant in Hurst. To prevent Fort Worth from annexing it, Hurst voted to incorporate. During the height of the Vietnam war, the Bell Helicopter workforce topped 11,000, many of them building Hueys. 

The North East Mall arrived in 1972 and, in the early 1990s, it remained the largest mall in Tarrant County. Today Hurst has a population of 40,413. Bell Helicopter Textron is still its largest employer. The Northeast campus of Tarrant County College is located in Hurst.   

To find out more visit the official city pages; Houston, Harlingen, Huntsville, Hurst.

Here is a list of cities in Texas that start with H

In Conclusion, Cities in Texas That Start With H

Texas has 10 of the most populous cities in the United States. Texas offers the best of both rural and urban life, however, the population and growth are not evenly distributed with the majority of its counties being rural. Our cities in Texas series just touches the surface of what Texas has to offer. Texas added approximately 4 million residents from the 2010 census until the 2020 census. Houston, one of our H cities along with the Dallas Metroplex combined had a growth of 2.7 million residents. Please visit often to see what our growing cities and our steadfast rural communities have to offer.

Read more about Texas cities here.

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