Those are some great pictures...one thing i kind of always remember was when i was younger i we would ride the bus from school and always go by where they were building the Toll Road and i was like man when are they going to finish this... It used to be all dirt and stuff and it's pretty cool to see how it is now.
There is this book that is dedicated to the entire freeway system about Houston. This is the link to the website. They have it at the library. It has good pictures in it for those who cannot read.
Well, most of the trees on the far left are still there... since that's Memorial Park! (somebody verify this for me...) Word is, that there's a ton of oil under the land of memorial park... but the family who donated the land to Houston denied them the chance to drill it. As soon as any attempt to drill the oil takes place, the family reclaims ownership of the land.
May 1987. The first store in San Antonio opened 100 years earlier (!) in 1887. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/JJ/dhjqn.html THU 05/28/87 Dillard purchase of Joske 's expected to be final soon
Did anyone check out the quiz on that link that Kam posted? I got 13 out of 15 right on the aerial photos. On the old photos, I only got 5 right.
By the way, if you guys ever want to see some of the finest pictures ever taken of the city, you should visit the city's photo archive located in the Julia Idleson building of the downtown library, right across the courtyard from the main library. There is a guy there - Joel Draut - who helped me find photos for us to use when we designed the Toyota Center website. The Rockets wanted some historic pics to use (of course, they are gone now ) and I found them there. They have over 3 million photos there, many of which are really astounding. You can buy prints for as little as like $5 for a 5x7 or poster size for I think $30. Some of the stuff they have is really phenominal, particularly if you love Houston.
i would argue that because of suburban development, there are more trees than there were before. i'm looking out my window right now in an office building on the west side of town. it looks like a freaking bird sanctuary. i can guarantee you there was not the tree coverage on this side of town before the homes in the area were built. looking east into town from here, i see nothng but tree tops with scattered buildings jutting up.
no...i've seen the pictures of this area before suburban development. katy was a treeless prarie. the area out west of town had very little tree development. certainly not mature oak trees like we see now...not with the canopy we see now. again...i look out my window and see more trees then i see in those pictures. far more.
Screw prairies. Those are for places like Oklahoma. Let those Sooners have their prairies. I'll take trees anyday!
there were more trees before cattle-ranching and rice/grain farming. as the area became more urbanized, the rice/grain farmers moved more south. the cattle ranches were the last to go. therefore, when the businesses and suburbs took over the area, there were actually just a few small groves of trees left by the ranchers for shade for the cattle. since then, tons of trees have been planted. because of the extreme amounts of rainfall the houston area receives anually, these trees have taken over in a relatively short period of time. a similar sitiuation has taken place in the areas outside of austin. however, with the scant annual rainfall received in this area (this year excluded) the trees take a much longer time to recover. also, trees in this area are a bit more slow-groing (live oak, elm) as opposed to houston (post oak, pine.) just my .02...
