The Houston spot is a foremost middle for constructing oilfield equipment

Comprising a overall spot of 637.four sq. miles (1,651 km2), Houston is the eighth-most expansive metropolis in the United States (such as consolidated metropolis-counties). It is the largest town in the United States by whole location, whose govt is not consolidated with that of a county, parish, or borough. Even though mainly in houston real estate classifieds , tiny portions of the town lengthen into Fort Bend and Montgomery counties, bordering other principal communities of Higher Houston these kinds of as Sugar Land and The Woodlands.

The metropolis of Houston was founded by land investors on August 30, 1836, at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou (a stage now acknowledged as Allen's Landing) and included as a town on June 5, 1837. The town is named right after previous Standard Sam Houston, who was president of the Republic of Texas and experienced gained Texas's independence from Mexico at the Struggle of San Jacinto twenty five miles (forty 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 buying and selling centre for the remainder of the 19th century.

The arrival of the 20th century had a convergence of financial aspects that fueled speedy growth in Houston, including a burgeoning port and railroad industry, the decrease of Galveston as Texas's primary port subsequent a devastating 1900 hurricane, the subsequent construction of the Houston Ship Channel, and the Texas oil boom. In the mid-twentieth century, Houston's economy diversified, as it turned house to the Texas Health-related Center—the world's largest focus of healthcare and investigation institutions—and NASA's Johnson Room Center, in which the Mission Management Centre is found.

Houston's financial system since the late nineteenth century has a broad industrial base in strength, production, aeronautics, and transportation. Leading in houston escort listings and building oilfield tools, Houston has the 2nd-most Fortune five hundred headquarters of any U.S. municipality within its metropolis limits (after New York Metropolis). The Port of Houston ranks first in the United States in worldwide waterborne tonnage dealt with and next in complete cargo tonnage dealt with.

Simply because of these strengths, Houston is designated as a world-wide town by the Globalization and Planet Towns Review Group and Community and international administration consulting company A.T. Kearney. The Houston location is the top U.S. market for exports, surpassing New York Town in 2013, in accordance to knowledge introduced by the U.S. Office of Commerce's Global Trade Administration. In 2012, the Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land location recorded $a hundred and ten.3 billion in goods exports. Petroleum goods, chemical substances, and oil and gas extraction tools accounted for approximately two-thirds of the metropolitan area's exports last 12 months. The leading three places for exports ended up Mexico, Canada, and Brazil.

The Houston region is a top middle for creating oilfield products. Considerably of its accomplishment as a petrochemical complicated is thanks to its hectic ship channel, the Port of Houston.[191] In the United States, the port ranks very first in intercontinental commerce and sixteenth amid the greatest ports in the entire world. Unlike most areas, substantial oil and gasoline costs are useful for Houston's economic system, as a lot of of its people are used in the strength business. Houston is the commencing or end point of many oil, fuel, and items pipelines.

The Houston–The Woodlands–Sugar Land metro area's gross domestic solution (GDP) in 2016 was $478 billion, making it the sixth-largest of any metropolitan spot in the United States and bigger than Iran's, Colombia's, or the United Arab Emirates' GDP. Only 27 nations other than the United States have a gross domestic solution exceeding Houston's regional gross region product (Gap). In 2010, mining (which is composed almost fully of exploration and creation of oil and gasoline in Houston) accounted for 26.3% of Houston's Hole up sharply in response to large strength costs and a reduced worldwide surplus of oil generation capability, adopted by engineering providers, health solutions, and manufacturing.