Houston Baptist University

Although Christopher Columbus was credited with the discovery of the Americas by Europeans the ships in his four voyages never reached the Gulf of Mexico Instead Columbus sailed into the Caribbean around Cuba and Hispaniola the first European exploration of the Gulf of Mexico was by Amerigo Vespucci in 1497 He followed the coastal land mass of Central America before returning to the Atlantic Ocean via the Straits of Florida between Florida and Cuba in his letters Vespucci described this trip and once Juan de la Cosa returned to Spain a famous world map depicting Cuba as an island was produced, The origin of many people in mixed expeditions was not always distinguished Various occupations such as sailors fishermen soldiers and nobles employed different languages (even from unrelated language groups) so that crew and settlers of Iberian empires recorded as Galicians from Spain were actually using Portuguese Basque Catalan Italian and Languedoc languages which were wrongly identified, French 0.25% Main article: Education in Texas. . . .

. . In 1540 expeditions under Hernando de Alarcon and Melchior Diaz visited the area of Yuma and immediately saw the natural crossing of the Colorado River from Mexico to California by land as an ideal spot for a city as the Colorado River narrows to slightly under 1000 feet wide in one small point Later military expeditions that crossed the Colorado River at the Yuma Crossing include Juan Bautista de Anza (1774). The three additional East Texas counties that join with other regional government councils are Chambers County (Anahuac) Liberty County (Liberty) and Walker County (Huntsville) all three in geographic proximity to the Houston metropolitan areas, Near the coast the land is low and extremely flat and often marshy the Piney Woods extend into the Northern parts of Southeast Texas reaching as far south as the rice paddies and marshlands that lie between Houston and Beaumont the highest point on the coast is at High Island where a salt dome raises the elevation to around 40 feet (12 m), Automobiles of all kinds have had enormous influence on Houston culture largely a result of the urban sprawl and sparse public transportation that has followed the dismantling of the city's former trolley system Many of the Houston's business districts such as Uptown and Greenspoint began their development as edge cities Furthermore many notable neighborhoods began as streetcar suburbs including the Heights and Sharpstown. .