SOUTHERN PACIFIC LINES 45 
and Nebraska and receives oil by pipe lines from all parts of the south- 
central United States. 
The city has many fine avenues, handsome residences, large modern 
office buildings, and numerous shade trees, parks, and gardens. Rice 
Institute, with an endowment of $10,000,000 and assets of $14,000,000, 
is a great educational establishment. Railroad lines connect Houston 
with the city and port of Galveston (population 52,938), on the Gulf 
of Mexico, 50 miles to the southeast. (See pls. 5, B, and 6, A.) 
Houston experienced its first railroad activity as early as 1853 and 
was connected with neighboring towns long before 1881, when the 
first train arrived from New Orleans. 
The first settlement at Houston was made early in 1836, when it 
was the head of navigation for small boats on Buffalo Bayou. It was 
the capital of the Republic until 1840, when a new capital was 
ordered established at Austin. 
On the southern outskirts of Houston, at Pierce Junction, there is a 
salt dome that produces a large amount of petroleum. Originally the 
place was marked by a slight mound on which gas was found in shal- 
low borings. Considerable drilling was required to develop the field, 
the first 54 holes being unsuccessful. From 1901 to 1930 a total of 
19,637,240 barrels was produced from 86 wells, and the production in 
1930, at about 10,000 barrels a day, amounted to 3,847,000 barrels. 
The oil comes in greater part from depths of 3,500 to 4,600 feet, from 
strata of lower Miocene, Oligocene(?), and Eocene age on the flanks of 
the uplift, where the beds are tilted up against the salt core. The top 
of the salt here is about 630 feet below the surface. One later hole 
5,260 feet deep is a producer. From 1,300 feet to about 4,000 feet are 
pink and other colored clays interbedded with sand and gravel. 
Gray and blue clays below 4,000 feet are regarded as probably Oligo- 
cene. The basal Miocene appears to lie 3,500 to 3,600 feet below the 
surface near the dome and 3,800 to 3,900 feet below farther away from 
the uplift. (Bowman.) 
From the Sabine River westward nearly to Columbus, eastern Texas 
presents a plain with wide areas of level lands and low terraces 
trenched slightly by valleys of the larger drainageways. The eleva- 
tion of this plain, which is near 15 feet at the east, rises to 50 feet near 
Houston, to 100 feet beyond Richmond, and to 225 feet on the divide 
between the San Bernard and Colorado Rivers. To the north it 
extends to the Hockley scarp, at which there is a distinct rise. The 
lower part of the plain is mantled by a deposit of clay and silt known as 
the Beaumont clay, and the upper terraces to the north and west are 
covered by a sheet of sand and gravel known as the Lissie formation, 
both regarded as of Pleistocene age. The boundary between these 
two formations has not been mapped exactly, and only the general 
outline of their history is known. Underneath is the eastward- 
