Missouri City

Missouri City is on U.S. Highway 90A and State Highway 6, twenty miles southwest of downtown Houston in northeast Fort Bend and southwest Harris counties. In 1890 R. M. Cash and L. E. Luckle, two Houston real estate investors, bought four square miles of land southwest of Houston. They advertised in St. Louis, Missouri, and surrounding areas and referred to the property as a "land of genial sunshine and eternal summer." In 1893 W. R. McElroy bought eighty acres in the same vicinity and began to promote the area. To tie his promotion into the advertising by Cash and Luckle and help sales in the St. Louis area, he called the new town Missouri City. It was officially registered in Texas in 1894. The first families to settle at the site came from the area of Arlington, Texas. The first business was a blacksmith shop. In the early 1900s homes and a schoolhouse were built, and a general store housed the first post office, which opened in 1897. The first Catholic church, built in 1913, was destroyed in 1915 by a hurricane. Another was built and still stood in 1990. The Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway came through what is now the northern part of Missouri City in 1853. A depot was built in 1902. Another line, known as the Sugar Land Railroad, later ran beside State Highway 6. Sugarcane was shipped from plantations near Missouri City to Sugar Land, Texas. Access to the railroads opened markets to farmers and ranchers shipping cotton, corn, cattle, and sugarcane. Many residents also used the railroad to commute to work in other towns.

Adapted from the official Handbook of Texas, a state encyclopedia developed by the Texas State Historical Association (TSHA). It is an authoritative source of trusted historical records.