Texas Almanac, 1952-1953 Page: 285
[674] p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this book.
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PORTS-SHIPPING.
Texas Foreign and Domestic Shipping
However. cotton, wheat, rice, forest products.
sulphur and livestock products contribute an
enormous volume. Characteristically, the
Texas ports (do a much greater outbound
than inbound business. The development of
the manufacturing industries in Texas is
gradually balancing this inflow and outflow
of commerce.
While the Texas ports do a large foreign
business, they have served an even greater
purpose in their larger coastwise business,
which is primarily with the Atlantic coast.
though there is also a considerable shipping
business with the Pacific coast through the
Panama Canal.
Tables that follow show the facilities of
these ports and give data on their relative
importance.
U.S. CUSTOMS DISTRICTS IN TEXAS
Four United States custom districts have
their headquarters in Texas, two of which lie
wholly, and two of which lie partly, within
the state, as follows:
No. 21.-Sabine District with headquarters
at Port Arthur and including ports of entry
of Port Arthur, Sabine. Orange and Beau-
mont. Texas. and Lake Charles, La.
No. 22.--Galveston District with headquar-
ters at Galveston and including the ports of
entry of Galveston. Texas City, touston.
Freeport, Corpus Christi and Dallas.
No. 23.-Laredo District with headquarters
at Laredo and including the ports of entry of
Laredo, Brownsville. Roma. Rio Grande City.
Hidalgo, Del Rio, Eagle Pass and San An-
tonio.
No. 24.-El Paso District with headquarters
at El Paso and including the ports of entry
of El Paso. Fabens, Ysleta and Presidio.
Texas. and Columbus, N.M.The development of Texas ports has been
of inestimable value in the economic growth
of the state and the entire Southwest. On a
map the Texas coast appears to have many
desirable harbors. As a matter of fact. the
development of ports has been a gigantic
engineering undertaking that has cost hun-
dreds of millions of dollars.
It is said that La Salle predicted that the
greatest city in America would arise at the
mouth of the Mississippi. le was not too far
wrong. But La Salle could not see the great
future production of oil. cotton, wheat, live-
stock, forest and other products that would
one day pour from the natural hinterland of
the western Gulf ports, nor could he visualize
the development of the railroad.
There are now thirteen deep-water ports
and a fourteenth that does an appreciable
domestic shipping business through a barge
channel. These ports that line the Texas
coast from the Sabine to the Rio Grande
handle a volume of commerce that is equaled
by few other stretches of tidewater of com-
parable length anywhere in the world. Hous-
ton, leading Texas port, ranked second to
New York among the ports of the nation in
total tonnage handled during 1948. 1949 and
1950.
The vital need of Texas ports, and the
vital service they give, arises from the fact
that the hinterland territory consisting of
Texas and adjoining states to the north and
west of Texas, produce prodigious amounts
of raw materials in excess of the demands
of the population in this area. Possibly no
other area of comparable size anywhere in
the world produces as much tonnage of raw
materials in excess of its own requirements
as does this area.
Petroleum and petroleum products account
for more than half of the outbound traffic.285
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Texas Almanac, 1952-1953, book, 1951; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth117137/m1/287/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.