| 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.
"The causeway between Hog Island and Baytown
was built in 1933 and the Morgan's Point ferry began operation then between Hog
Island and Morgan's Point. The ferry service ended in 1953 when the Baytown-La
Porte Tunnel was built at the site of Spillman Island in the ship channel.
(Washburn Tunnel is located in Pasadena area; it opened in 1950.) The Fred
Hartman bridge replaced the Baytown-La
Porte tunnel in the 1990s. After the Morgan's Point ferry was closed, people
continued to use the causeway to go to Hog Island to go fishing and crabbing.
In 1961, Hurricane Carla destroyed the causeway and the connection to Hog Island."
- Wanda Orton, Columnist and retired managing editor, Baytown Sun
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. | 
