Comprising a complete area of 637.four square miles (1,651 km2), Houston is the eighth-most expansive town in the United States (which includes consolidated city-counties). It is the greatest town in the United States by complete location, whose govt is not consolidated with that of a county, parish, or borough. Even though mostly in Harris County, little portions of the city prolong into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, bordering other principal communities of Greater Houston this sort of as Sugar Land and The Woodlands.

The city of Houston was started by land traders on August thirty, 1836, at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou (a level now recognized as Allen's Landing) and integrated as a town on June five, 1837. houston garage sales is named following former General Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and had gained Texas's independence from Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto 25 miles (40 km) east of Allen's Landing. Right after briefly serving as the cash of the Texas Republic in the late 1830s, Houston grew steadily into a regional trading centre for the remainder of the 19th century.

The arrival of the twentieth century experienced a convergence of financial elements that fueled speedy progress in Houston, which includes a burgeoning port and railroad sector, the decline of Galveston as Texas's primary port adhering to a devastating 1900 hurricane, the subsequent construction of the Houston Ship Channel, and the Texas oil boom. In the mid-twentieth century, Houston's economic system diversified, as it grew to become house to the Texas Health care Center—the world's premier concentration of healthcare and research institutions—and NASA's Johnson Area Heart, exactly where the Mission Manage Centre is positioned.

Houston's economy given that the late nineteenth century has a broad industrial base in energy, production, aeronautics, and transportation. Top in healthcare sectors and creating oilfield tools, Houston has the 2nd-most Fortune 500 headquarters of any U.S. municipality in its metropolis restrictions (after New York Metropolis). The Port of Houston ranks very first in the United States in worldwide waterborne tonnage dealt with and 2nd in total cargo tonnage taken care of.

Simply because of these strengths, Houston is designated as a world-wide town by the Globalization and Entire world Cities Review Group and Community and worldwide administration consulting agency A.T. Kearney. houston escorts is the leading U.S. industry for exports, surpassing New York Metropolis in 2013, according to knowledge released by the U.S. Section of Commerce's Worldwide Trade Administration. In 2012, the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land location recorded $one hundred ten.3 billion in items exports. Petroleum items, chemical compounds, and oil and fuel extraction gear accounted for around two-thirds of the metropolitan area's exports previous 12 months. The prime 3 destinations for exports were Mexico, Canada, and Brazil.

The Houston spot is a major middle for creating oilfield equipment. Significantly of its achievement as a petrochemical intricate is owing to its active ship channel, the Port of Houston.[191] In the United States, the port ranks initial in global commerce and sixteenth amid the biggest ports in the entire world. Not like most areas, large oil and gasoline rates are advantageous for Houston's financial system, as numerous of its citizens are employed in the energy sector. Houston is the commencing or finish point of numerous oil, gas, and products pipelines.

The Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metro area's gross domestic item (GDP) in 2016 was $478 billion, producing it the sixth-biggest of any metropolitan spot in the United States and bigger than Iran's, Colombia's, or the United Arab Emirates' GDP. Only 27 nations around the world other than the United States have a gross domestic merchandise exceeding Houston's regional gross area product (Hole). In 2010, mining (which is composed nearly totally of exploration and creation of oil and gas in Houston) accounted for 26.three% of Houston's Gap up sharply in reaction to high strength prices and a decreased worldwide surplus of oil production potential, followed by engineering providers, overall health companies, and manufacturing.