Houston, an inland port city of southeastern Texas, on the Gulf Coastal
Plain, is joined by the Houston Ship Channel with the Gulf of Mexico,
fifty miles distant, at Galveston. The ship channel joins the Port of
Houston with the Intracoastal Canal.
Houston’s corporate limits of 349.4 square miles, including the 22
square miles of Lake Houston and a canal leading to it, surround
fourteen of twenty-eight municipalities in its metropolitan area, Harris
County, of which Houston is the county seat. The county’s total area is
1,747 square miles, of which the land area is 1,711 square miles.
The city’s lowest altitude is 25 feet; the highest is 75 feet. The
county’s altitude runs from close to sea level to 310 feet near Tomball,
on the north.
The annual normal rainfall is 45.3 inches.
The annual average temperature is 70.0° F.
The excess of births over deaths in the metropolitan area is around
24,000 a year, and each year around 21,000 more persons move to Houston
than move away from it. Thus the metropolitan area’s population
increases by an estimated 45,000 persons a year—a conservative figure.
Of the 1,243,158 persons living in the metropolitan area at the time of
the 1960 census, 634,522 were females and 608,636 were males, giving
females a lead of 25,886.
In 1960, 94.5 per cent of the population was urban, 5.5 per cent was
rural.
The density of population was 726.6 persons a square mile.
Population of Houston Percentage of
(Corporate Limits Only) Increase
U.S. Census
1850 2,396
1860 4,845 102.2
1870 9,332 92.6
1880 16,513 76.9
1890 27,557 66.8
1900 44,633 61.9
1910 78,800 76.5
1920 138,276 75.4
1930 292,352 111.4
1940 384,514 31.5
1950 596,163 55.0
1960 938,219 57.3
Population of Percentage of
Metropolitan Houston Increase
(Harris County)
1850 4,668
1860 9,070 94.3
1870 17,375 91.5
188 27,985 61.0
1890 37,249 33.1
1900 63,786 71.2
1910 115,693 81.3
1920 186,667 61.3
1930 359,328 92.5
1940 528,961 47.2
1950 806,701 52.5
1960 1,243,158 54.1