FilioScotia

I know all about Gonzo's blog. I've sent him some ideas over the years and he's even used some of them. He does a great job with that blog.

That's the guy! Thanks hugely.

No, not that kind of help, yet.

I'm hoping someone can provide me the name and website of the local guy who has written a phenomenal number of articles about Houston history and posted them on his own website.

I knew it at one time, and I even had it bookmarked. Unfortunately, that was two computers ago, and I'm now embarrassed to say that I -- ahem -- have forgotten it.

I've Google-searched "Houston History", and "Houston Historian", and "History of Houston"

but the website I'm thinking about has not turned up.

If it's any help, the website I'm talking about doesn't look like it was put together by a professional web designer. It looks a little "home-made", but I remember it's full of articles about all things related to Houston history.

Can anybody here help?

Was this area called Five Points because the intersection of several streets created five corners? Or was it because it was such a bad part of town somebody thought it reminded them of the infamous Five Points area of lower Manhattan in NYC?

I've found Maple and Ruiz streets, there in the general area of present day Clayton Homes Housing Project. That was called Frost Town at one time, and I've read it was a bad place to be.

Isn't it possible that TXDoT put those two ghost ramp stubs on the elevated 59 as part of an original plan for an exit ramp down onto Chartres Street?

Looks to me like it was intended to connect to Main St., but that never happened for whatever reason.

I never thought about that. It IS possible that the original plan may have been to connect that ramp to North Main. It would have made sense and it would have been a perfect fit.

But, as you suggest, digging out another RR underpass like the one on North Shaver may have been too expensive.

I'm almost a hundred percent sure that before the age of freeways, the only way to get to La Porte from downtown Houston was what you suggest. Take Harrisburg to Broadway, then take Broadway a mile or two south to the La Porte Road intersection and then go east through Pasadena and Deer Park.

That old stretch of road between Broadway and the Pasadena City Limits that was once named La Porte Road is now Lawndale. It's still there, I think. I drove it recently just for old time sake, and I can tell you it is several miles of very bad road. Especially at that old underpass.

The Old Galveston Road -- now State Hwy 3 -- took you to Galveston through South Houston, Webster, League City, Dickinson and La Marque. I can remember when it was just two lanes, not well maintained, and you had to really want to get to Galveston to make that drive, or take the Interurban train.

Other than several very long streets that run between OGR and 225 in Pasadena, I don't know of any other way to get from OGR to La Porte before you get to the Texas City "Y" at Hwy 146 in La Marque.

And your final question, I'm pretty sure that stretch of 610 between 225 and I-45 was a new route. It plowed new ground between those points. But I could be wrong.

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My favorite Houston area ghost ramp is on the circle at the south end of the Washburn Tunnel. Look at it on Google Earth, and you can see the circle has an exit ramp pointing in a generally southeast direction, but it never went anywhere. Not just that it can NEVER go anywhere because it has never been needed, and perhaps that direction is now blocked by development. Great planning guys.

The tunnel and the access circles were built in 1950, and that ghost ramp to nowhere has always been one of the south side circle's more enduring and endearing mysteries.

I'll take your word for the stub-outs at hwy 59, but they don't really tell us anything. The stub-outs could have gone anywhere. It's a long way from 59 over to where 225 dead-ends at Broadway.

There's another angle to whatever happened to extending 225 to downtown. Looking at it on Google Earth you can see the residential areas it would have to go through. And if it follows Lawndale, it would go straight through the middle of the Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery, which is one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the city. There is also the Villa de Matel Convent, which has living quarters across Lawndale from the convent grounds.

I think state and city highway planners took a look at the destruction and disruption a major highway would cause and plans for extending 225 went into the circular file. Of course those considerations never stopped them from building Hwy 59 straight through the Montrose area.

Then again, on closer inspection of what I see on Google Earth, the dead-end of 225 at Broadway points due northwest straight to an abandoned railroad right-of-way just across Simms Bayou.That RR right of way leads NW and crosses Harrisburg at 75th Street, and connects to the abandoned RR right of way that runs parallel to Harrisburg most of the way to downtown. Check it out.

So while a Lawndale route appears -- to me -- to be out of the question, it's a distinct possibility that a 225 extension could take the Harrisburg route, and they already have most of the right of way for it. but what do I know? I'm so smart, but why ain't I rich?

I've always thought 225 should come in across Broadway and connect with Lawndale. It would naturally follow Lawndale all the way into town till it merges with Telephone Road.

I don't think Harrisburg would have been a viable route. Go to Google Earth and look at the east end. 225 crosses Broadway but dead-ends a short distance from there. If it could be continued it would flow right onto Lawndale.

FYI: Unlike those who stayed behind in New Orleans and trashed the Superdome, the Katrina refugees who came to Houston left no damage and no messes in the Astrodome.

The dome WOULD be the world's biggest parking garage, but have you considered the difficulties motorists would face in getting in and out of it?

You could have 20 or 25 floors of parking inside the dome, but I wouldn't want to be forced to park on one of the upper floors. It would take forever to get out. I think I would rather just take the train or the bus to Reliant Park, and I think a lot of other people would as well.

***Seawall Blvd. in Galveston was realigned sometime in the late 1950's when Ft. Crockett was abandoned.***

Fort Crockett was never "abandoned". The army deactivated it as a military post in 1948, and it became the Galveston Recreation Center for the Fourth Army. Fishery research started at the fort in 1950, and in 1957 it was acquired by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Bureau of Commercial Fisheries acquired 10 buildings there. The fort was transferred to the National Marine Fisheries Service in 1970, and the Department of Commerce began renovating the complex in 1998. The Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary moved its offices to the Post Exchange building in 2006.

Just last year, Galveston celebrated 100 years of history with Fort Crockett.

Here's a link to that story. http://galvestondail...m/story/266278/

I was surprised to learn that Fort Crockett was not a Civil War fort. It was built in 1897, but didn't acquire the name "Fort Crockett" until 1903, when it was rebuilt after the 1900 hurricane.

It's true that Dave was known for being a boozer at one time, but that's very old and outdated news. He's been on the wagon and sober for quite a few years now. It took one health scare after another to make him finally decide to take the pledge and stay dry. Nobody his age -- 73 -- could be an alcoholic and look as good as healthy as he looks.

So come on people. Lose the boozer stuff and give Dave his props for being a hugely successful TV news anchor longer than anybody in TV history.

For plumber2: In My Sweet Charlie, Dave was in just two very short scenes, the one where he shot Charlie as he ran away, and the closing scene where he and some others watch as Charlie's body is placed in an ambulance and taken away. So he was on the location for only as long as it took to shoot those scenes, both of which were probably shot on the same day. He wasn't there the day you were there.

The Beautiful Music station was KXYZ AM and FM. It started that format in the late 50s, and I loved it. It wasn't just elevator or doctor's office music. It was real orchestral popular music performed by people you've heard of.

Sometime around 1965, the owner -- Lester Kamin -- decided to change the format to less "Beautiful Music" to more "Pop" music. He threw out the orchestral stuff and went to pop singers and big bands. In 1966 he hired KPRC DJ Bill Calder to be his program director and do an air shift. Calder fired all the deep throated announcers -- like the great Pat Brown, Larry Fogle, and Richard Fulghum -- the guys who made the Beautiful Music programs sound so great, and replaced them with livelier but less interesting Pop Music DJ's from other cities.

I couldn't stand listening to Calder because of his obnoxious on-air persona and his giant ego. He actually believed people wanted to hear HIM, and the music he played was just filler between his DJ riffs. He just ruined a great station, in my opinion. He only lasted about a year at KXYZ before he got canned and moved on, but the damage had been done. KXYZ was never the same.

If you want proof of what I say about Calder, check out the chronological list of radio stations where he worked, and the fact that he didn't work more than about a year at any of those stations. He wore out his welcome pretty quickly and left a trail of destruction everywhere he went.

http://www.calder.tv...l/stations.html

In 1968, Kamin gave up trying to revive KXYZ and sold it to ABC Radio.

The Comanche territory -- Comancheria -- covered much of the midwest, and it reached far south into all corners of Texas.

Remember it was the Comanches that attacked Fort Parker near present day Waco in 1836, and took Cynthia Ann Parker. They were practically everywhere in those times, but it's not accurate to say they "put a major damper on colonization."

The truth is that colonists came in by the thousands from practically everywhere, despite the Comanches. A few people may have avoided Texas because of the Indian threats, but a lot more people packed up and came anyway.

Check out this article by the Texas State Historical Association: http://www.tshaonlin.../articles/bmc72

Oh - THAT's what you wanted. Your original question didn't indicate how far back you wanted to go.

The only Indians known to have lived in the general area now known as Galveston and Houston were the Karankawas, who are now extinct. They were there when the Spanish and French were exploring this region in the 1500s and 1600s. They managed, somehow, to survive until the 1850s, when they were literally exterminated.

Here's a link to a fine article about them in the Texas State Historical Association's Handbook Online:

http://www.tshaonlin.../articles/bmk05

Texas historians tell us that the area known as Harrisburg -- which was platted by John R. Harris in 1826 -- was the Allen Brothers' first choice for where they wanted to buy land and resell it for new development. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, the Allen brothers couldn't buy Harrisburg since Harris had died, and no clear title to the land existed. So the brothers went to their second choice farther up Buffalo Bayou away from Harrisburg by a few miles.

Harrisburg remained an important rail town until a fire in the 1870s destroyed the rail yards, which were rebuilt in Houston. The population of Harrisburg dwindled with the loss of the railroads and with the widening of the Houston Ship Channel in 1919. By the 1920s, the population was down to 1400 or so, and whatever Harrisburg had in the way of local governance had disappeared. The City of Houston annexed it in 1926.

Since Harrisburg was a "town" or a "community" for many years, there are a lot of families with parents and grandparents who were born there.

Speaking of Jon Matthews, does anybody know where he is or what he's doing now? Back in 2007 he got three years of hard time for indecency with a child, but that was five years ago. I haven't seen or heard anything about him since 2007.

I can think of one case. The new owners of the Boston Red Sox recently completed a complete rehabbing of their beloved 90 year old Fenway Park. It took ten years and cost them nearly 300 million dollars, and old Fenway is ready for another 40 or 50 years of baseball.

It takes a lot of determination and forward looking vision to preserve a local treasure that way. Sadly, those qualities don't exist in Houston's political class.

Check it out: http://boston.sports...lmost-complete/

People I hate to say it but I fear the Astrodome is doomed. Nobody is going to pony up the money it would take to completely rehab and refurb it enough to make it an appealing venue. Not when Reliant Stadium with all its new bells and whistles is available.

The least expensive option is demolition, and they say that will cost at least 100 million dollars.

It's monumentally sad to see it come to this, but it's the reality.

My history with the Astros in the Dome was funny. I swear to you that it seemed like every time I took my kids out to a game the Astros would lose.

If the Astros were leading going into the ninth inning, and we decided to leave early to get ahead of the traffic, they would be losing by the time we got to our car. At the same time, if they were behind going into the ninth, and we left early, they would be ahead by the time we got to the car.

It happened so often it got to be a family joke. My son would say "hey dad let's go help the Astros lose tonight." Or, "hey dad let's stay home and help the Astros win."

We joked that the Astros put guards at the gates with instructions to NOT let US in. We finally wised up and stopped leaving early.

Truth be told we did see them win a whole bunch of games over many years. The most fun I ever had in the Dome was the night my son and I watched the Astros put an old fashioned country whuppin' on the Reds.

It was one of those nights when everything went right for the Astros. Final score was something like 14 to nothing. They couldn't do anything wrong. Hits went everywhere. Half the team hit home runs. Everybody in our section in the mezzanine was high-fiveing all night.

One of the regulars on another local website message board managed to get inside the Astrodome recently and took some photos. It's really depressing to see what is happening at the Eighth Wonder of the World.

http://swamplot.com/what-i-saw-when-i-snuck-into-the-astrodome/2012-03-23/

Here is a link to a 1913 Houston street map. It's expandable so you can find the precise location of that baseball park on the very southwestern edge of downtown.

https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/arc/maps/images/map0435.jpg

You will see that it was later covered over by the west end of the Pierce Elevated. Locate Heiner Street, running north/south across San Felipe, (now West Dallas). Heiner still exists as the exit street for I-45 South.

This is a fascinating glimpse of how Houston's streets were laid out almost a hundred years ago.

As I recall, the "Richmond Strip" developed a bad reputation, as a hangout for drunk college kids and others. Lots of fights and police were always making arrests for public drinking and drunkeness. Places with that kind of reputation don't last very long.

Mature thinking adults don't go there, and they are the people the restaurants and bars depend on to stay in business over the long haul.