Houston’s good fortune during its first century and its extraordinary rise afterward have tempted some to call it a city of destiny. But the cliché signifies an irrevocable fate in spite of man’s successes or failures. And man, not fate, decisively controls the fortunes of cities. How is one city more or less than another? What is Houston compared with such whole or complete cities as Amsterdam and San Francisco? Only a prophet could say, for this hopelessly vigorous city is incomplete, unfinished; it cannot yet be judged as a whole city. Until then, Houstonians possess the rare excitement of living in a city during the springtime of what may become greatness, a city budding and shooting with the extravagance of nature’s annual renewal, a city in its feast years. [Illustration: _Richard W. Dowling, Confederate Hero_] [Illustration: _Mule-drawn streetcar, 1890_] [Illustration: _Piano van, 1917_] [Illustration: _The San Jacinto Monument_] A HOUSTON VADE MECUM 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