Houston’s Cotton Depot, c. 1909
After the Civil War, cotton agriculture blossomed on the rich lands of east Texas, and Houston simultaneously blossomed as the region’s commercial center. This tinted photograph from the 1890s reveals the tremendous volume of traffic that came through Houston, where Texas cotton was compacted in steam-powered cotton presses, loaded onto railcars, and shipped to cotton mills in the Southeast and Britain to be made into cloth. University of Houston Libraries, Special Collections, George Fuerman Collection.