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Texas

These cities have administered portions of what is now Texas since European colonialism began in earnest. Prior to that, important permanent Native American settlements existed at the sites of modern-day Waco (Hueco), San Antonio, and Austin (the Gault site indicates that this area has been near-continuously inhabited for 20,000 years) due to the high number of natural springs which provide a steady and year-round supply of aquifer-generated clean drinking water in the area.

Early Colonialism

Spanish: Vallodolid (pre-1551); Madrid (post-1551)
French: Paris (competing claims of sovereignty against Spain, never de facto in control).

Spanish Period

Pre-1686: Mexico City (also Santa Fe, Durango, and Santander Jimenez)

Spanish Tejas was governed directly by the Spanish from Mexico City. However large portions of the state were administered separately. Ysleta (outside El Paso) and west Tejas were administered from Santa Fe and southern Texas was split between Nuevo Vizcaya (administered from Durango) and Nuevo Santander (administered from a small now-abandoned settlement called Santander Jimenez).

1686-1721: Monclova (in Coahuila, Mexico)

Established as the first provincial capital of Spanish Coahuila y Tejas.

1721-1772: Los Adaes (now Robeline, Louisiana)

On the easternmost frontier of what was then Spanish Tejas, founded to protect against encroachment by the French after Fort St Louis was discovered. This settlement ended up so isolated that the French in nearby Natchitoches had to supply their food. In 1762, this threat ended with the transition of Louisiana to from French control to Spanish. The crown ordered Los Adaes abandoned and relocated to present-day San Antonio.

1772-1821: San Antonio de Bexar

Except for two brief periods in 1806 and 1810 (when Nacogdoches was the de facto capital), San Antonio - being the only true town of note in Spanish Tejas - operated as the capital under New Spain.

1806/1810: Nacogdoches

Due to increasing uneasiness in New Spain, including in Spanish Tejas, and for suspected personal preferences, two viceroyals instead conduct their operations from Nacogdoches.

Mexican Period

1822-1834: Saltillo and Monclova

Mexico again combined Coahuila and Tejas into a single political unit administered from Saltillo and Monclova, alternatively.

1834-1836: San Felipe de Austin and San Antonio de Bexar

The Department of Texas, being a subdistrict, selected and used as a site of government during this time a site outside of modern Sealy, Texas (of Sealy Mattress fame) about 50 miles northwest of Houston

Republic Period

1836: Washington-on-the-Brazos

Where the General Convention, which drafted and signed our Declaration of Independence from Mexico, met here near what is now Navasota northwest of Houston.

1836: Harrisburg

After their declaration, a temporary capital was selected at Harrisburg, now a neighborhood on the southeastern outlying edge of Houston. Santa Anna’s advances forced the provisional government to flee to:

1836: Galveston

… where they continued to operate. At the time, Galveston, San Antonio, Gonzales, Marshall, New Braunfels, Palestine, Paris, Tyler, and Victoria were the largest settlements in Texas. They were again forced to flee by Santa Anna and left to:

1836: Velasco

… a small Tejano town across the Brazos from Freeport.

1836: Columbia

After securing their independence, the first elected government of Texas met in a small town now known as West Columbia, on the Brazos River just inland from the coast and southwest of Houston. The settlement was chosen for two principle reasons: 1. both Texian newspapers were located here, the Texas Telegraph and Texas Register, and had a significant built environment due to previously serving as a regional government under Mexican rule. However, Stephen F. Austin, while serving as Secretary of State passed away from pneumonia while in Columbia and as the needs of the government grew, providing adequate housing became problematic and a different capital was chosen.

1837-1839: Houston

Houston, newly founded, was chosen as the capital by 1st Texan President Sam Houston and namesake of the new city, seizing on the opportunity to claim the Father of Texas mantle from the recently deceased Stephen F. Austin. Mirabeau B. Lamar, a close friend of Austin’s succeeded Houston as President and directed
Congress to appoint a site-selection commission to select a site for a new and permanent state capitol.

1839-1842: Austin

In 1839 a settlement on the western frontier, in an area Lamar thought was among Texas’s most scenic and beautiful (the Hill Country, or Lomeria Grande to the Mexican government), a town called Waterloo near the split in the important roads to San Antonio and Santa Fe, on a bluff above the north bank and interior side of a large river-bend (as it exits the rugged Balcones Canyonlands on the edge of the Llano Estacado) of Texas’s lengthiest and at the time one of the most navigable rivers (the Colorado) was chosen and the name changed to Austin to honor Texas’s preeminent founding father.

In 1841, the deceased Austin’s political rival Sam Houston again became President of Texas. A large portion of the state population, of which President Houston counted himself among the most vocal proponents, believed that Austin was too isolated and susceptible to Mexican interference.

1842-1845: Houston / Washington-on-the-Brazos

Seizing on a diplomatic delegation sent by Lamar to Santa Fe being arrested upon arrival and Mexico capturing San Antonio in 1842, President Houston ordered the state archives moved to Houston (more on that momentarily) and later moved the government’s actual operations to Houston and then to Washington-on-the-Brazos. Houston was not appreciably larger than Austin at this time (both numbered around 1,000) and the local population of Austin prevented the archives from being moved using armed force (under Republic law, the site of the archives is the capital) in an event known as the Texas Archives War. During this time period, the operation of the government only intermittently returned to Austin and instead operated at a distance in either of the two others.

American Period

1845-1872: Austin

In 1845, new President Anson Jones called for a convention to debate annexation into the United States and to approve a new constitution. The convention acquiesced to these requests, and selected Austin rather than Houston as the temporary state capital until 1850 when a statewide vote would he held and another 20 years after to affirm the initial election. In 1850, Austin received a slim majority of the vote over Houston and in 1872 (delayed by two years because of the civil war and reconstruction), Austin again won a slim majority (63,297 votes) but this time over two other cities: Houston at 35,188 and Waco at 12,776.

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As of 1870, thirty years after the selection of Waterloo as the site of the capital and nearly on the eve of the final vote ratifying its status, the major settlements in Texas were (source: Texas Almanac):

Austin itself had 4,428, the fifth highest population in the state.

Anglo / American:
Galveston: 13,818
Houston: 9,382
Jefferson: 4,190
Marshall: 1,920
Huntsville: ~1,600
Rusk: ~1,000

Scots-Irish / Scandinavian:
Waco: 3,008
Dallas: ~3,000
Sherman: 1,439

German:
New Braunfels: 2,261
Brenham: 2,221
La Grange: 1,325

Tejano:
San Antonio: 12,256
Brownsville: 4,905
Victoria: 2,500
Corpus Christi: 2,140
Laredo: 2,046

Other cities, when put into the context of their region, show that Austin’s choice of location still, 30 years down the road, made sense given the original political compromises. Austin is centrally located between the four founding demographic groups of Texas during the Republican period: Anglos dominated the southeast and plantation country, German immigrants dominated the Hill Country, Scots-Irish and other European immigrants dominated the northern plains, and Tejanos dominated in the south. This probably will stir feathers, but if history went differently and Native Americans incorporated into our politics, it would have also made sense as well as Cherokee, Apache, and Comanche dominated the west. I will note that Tejano populations are genetically largely reflective of pre-Columbian native DNA, just that they experienced cultural shifts from Spanish cultural genocide where most tried to “pass” as mestizo and then when the United States took over Anglos’ assumptions that these populations were “Mexican” rather than one of the hostile tribes carried over and the ability to pass continued to offer social protection.

Austin was the logical choice in 1839, in 1850, in 1872, and today. No single group was able to dominate and all were welcome. It’s early history shows this multi-culturalism, from the French Legation Building and surrounding estates, Swedish Hill, and Tejano Rainey, to the German neighborhoods scattered throughout what is now downtown. Even after the civil war, this integrative mentality predominated in Austin, with a black freedman’s town called Clarksville surrounded by some Austin’s then (and now) wealthiest neighborhoods. Unfortunately, the racist AF 1929 city plan ruined all of that and segregated the city.

Also: notice that many of the towns selected have nods to Republican ideological history: Washington, Houston, Columbia, Austin, Harrisburg, and even Waterloo.