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At the extreme
NW corner of Galveston Bay where buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto
River meet. "A beautiful peninsula containing Ross Sterling
home and terminating at the Houston Ship Channel at Barbours Cut."
- Ken
Rudine, October 22, 2007
History in a Pecan Shell:
Settled as early as 1822, the first resident was Nicholas Rightor.
The next owner was Johnson Calhoun Hunter who bought it from Rightor
in 1824.
The land changed
hands again in the late 1820s when Joseph C. Clopper and his three
sons bought it and renamed the Point after themselves. Over the
years the place had been known as Rightor's Point, Hunter's Point
and Clopper's Point, but after one of the Clopper sons sold the
property to James Morgan in late 1834, it’s been Morgan’s Point
ever since.
Morgan built a store and became the agent for a colony called New
Washington, which hardly materialized when during the Texas Revolution
the site was occupied by Mexican troops who burned the structures
after appropriating anything of use
A Confederate
shipyard was built at the mouth of Goose Creek in 1864 and it was
about this time thought was given to dredging a channel. In 1876
the shipping channel had been completed by Charles Morgan.
By 1930 a causeway
had been built and a ferry was in operation. The causeway was replaced
by the Washburn Tunnel in 1954 and the tunnel was superseded by
the Fred Hartman bridge in the 1980s.
The population
was a mere 50 just after WWII,
reaching 650 by the early 1950s. 1980 seems to be the high-water
mark for Morgan’s Point with 716 residents reported.
A State Historical marker marks the Morgan's Point Cemetery, and
James Morgan’s estate of Orange Grove has a marker of its own.
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