Bayou City is a popular nickname for the city of Houston, Texas, founded at the confluence of White Oak and Buffalo Bayous by the Allen Brothers in the early nineteenth century. Since that time, the ubiquitous namesake streams have played a major role in the city's development, both as provider of economic bounty in the eventual development of the Houston Ship Channel and protector in the form of vital floodwater runoff channels for this flat and low-lying metropolis.
Within the general vicinity of the Houston, and mostly within its corporate limits, are at least nineteen natural streams with the designation 'Bayou' in their names: Armand Bayou, Brays Bayou, Brickhouse Bayou, Buffalo Bayou, Carpenters Bayou, Cedar Bayou, Chocolate Bayou, Garner Bayou, Greens Bayou, Halls Bayou, Horsepen Bayou, Hunting Bayou, Jackson Bayou, Keegans Bayou, Luce Bayou, Reinhardt Bayou, Sims Bayou, Vince Bayou, and White Oak Bayou.
Bayou City may also make reference to any of the following:
- Bayou City Art Festival - an arts festival held biannually (spring and fall) in Houston, Texas.
- C.S. Bayou City - a Confederate States Navy gunboat during the American Civil War.
Famous quotes containing the word city:
“A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not “studying a profession,” for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)