About this tour
Houston does not sit on a great harbor or a mighty river — it grew up along a slow, winding, mud-brown creek called Buffalo Bayou. The Allen brothers chose their townsite here in 1836 precisely because they judged it the head of navigation, the farthest point a boat could reach inland, and that gamble made Houston a port. For nearly two centuries the bayou has been the city's working spine, its dumping ground, its flood threat, and now its proudest park. This drive follows Buffalo Bayou from the founding landing downtown out to the west, tracing old bridges, a hilltop mansion above a famous bend, and the reborn linear park where bats stream from a bridge at dusk and an old underground cistern hides beneath the grass.