Sugar Land, Texas
City in the United States in Fort Bend County
About Sugar Land
Sugar Land is the largest city in Fort Bend County, Texas, United States, located in the southwestern part of the Houston–Pasadena–The Woodlands metropolitan area. Located about 19 miles (31 km) southwest of downtown Houston, Sugar Land is a populous suburban municipality centered around the junction of Texas State Highway 6 and Interstate 69/U.S. Route 59.
Beginning in the 19th century, the present-day Sugar Land area was home to a large sugar plantation situated in the fertile floodplain of the Brazos River. Following the consolidation of local plantations into Imperial Sugar Company in 1908, Sugar Land grew steadily as a company town and incorporated as a city in 1959. Sugar Land has grown rapidly alongside other edge cities around Houston, with large-scale development of master-planned communities contributing to population swells since the 1980s.
Sugar Land is one of the fastest-growing cities in Texas. The 2020 United States Census reported that the city's population had grown more than 40% in the preceding 10 years following the annexation of the Greatwood and New Territory communities in December 2017. Over the same 10-year period, the number of employed persons living in Sugar Land increased by 61%.
Sugar Land is home to the headquarters of Imperial Sugar although the company's main sugar refinery and distribution center are no longer located in the city. The Imperial Sugar crown logo is featured in the city seal and logo.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
How Sugar Land is governed
Form of government not yet listed.
1 of 14 positions listed. Gray dashed boxes are placeholders waiting for a name.
Residents of Sugar Land
Registered voters elect the officials below.
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Mayor
Executive
- Joe R. Zimmerman per Wikidata
The city's chief elected official. Presides over the executive branch, proposes the budget and represents the city.
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City Manager / Administrator
Executive
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The professional administrator who runs day-to-day operations (in some cities appointed by the council instead of the mayor).
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Police Chief
Administration & departments
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Leads the police department.
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Fire Chief
Administration & departments
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Leads the fire and emergency services department.
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Public Works Director
Administration & departments
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Streets, water, sewer, and city buildings.
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Finance Director
Administration & departments
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The budget, taxes, and city accounts.
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Planning & Zoning Director
Administration & departments
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Land use, zoning, building permits.
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Parks & Recreation Director
Administration & departments
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Parks, programs, and public facilities.
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City Council
Legislative
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The elected body that passes ordinances, sets the tax rate and approves the budget.
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City Clerk
Administration & departments
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Keeps the official records, runs meeting agendas and, often, local elections.
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City Attorney
Administration & departments
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The city's lawyer; advises officials and prosecutes ordinance violations.
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Boards & Commissions
Legislative
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Citizen advisory bodies, such as planning, zoning appeals and library boards.
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Municipal Court
Judicial
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Hears traffic, ordinance and other minor cases.
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Municipal Judge
Judicial
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Presides over the municipal court.
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- Website
- sugarlandtx.gov
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Population over time
From 78,817 in 2010 to 111,026 in 2020 (+40.9%).
Show the numbers
| Year | Population |
|---|---|
| 2020 | 111,026 |
| 2013 | 83,860 |
| 2010 | 78,817 |
History
Sugar Land's founding
Sugar Land has roots in the original Mexican land grant made to Anglo-American Stephen F. Austin. One of the first settlers of the land, Samuel M. Williams, called this area Oakland Plantation. Williams' brother, Nathaniel, purchased the land from Austin in 1838. They developed the plantation by growing cotton, corn, and sugarcane. The neighborhood of First Colony, located in the town, refers to Stephen F. Austin's land grant, for it was one of the first Anglo settlements legally established in Texas.
During these early years, the plantation was the center of social life along the Brazos River. In 1853, Benjamin Terry and William J. Kyle purchased the Oakland Plantation from the Williams family. Terry is known for organizing a division of Texas Rangers during the Civil War and for naming the town.
Upon the deaths of Terry and Kyle, Colonel E. H. Cunningham bought the 12,500-acre (5,100 ha) plantation soon after the Civil War. He had a sugar-refining plant built here, and developed the town around it in 1879, platting the land and attracting settlers during the post-Reconstruction era.
Company town
In 1906, the Kempner family of Galveston, under the leadership of Isaac H. Kempner, and in partnership with Logan J. Copenhaver, purchased the 5,300-acre (2,100 ha) Ellis Plantation, one of the few plantations in Fort Bend County to survive the Civil War. The Ellis Plantation had originally been part of the Jesse Cartwright league; Will Ellis had operated it after the Civil War by a system of tenant farming, made up mostly of African-American families who were previously enslaved on the land.
In 1908, the partnership acquired the adjoining 12,500-acre (5,100 ha) Cunningham Plantation, with its raw-sugar mill and cane-sugar refinery. The partnership changed the name to Imperial Sugar Company; Kempner associated the name "Imperial", which was also the name of a small raw-sugar mill on the Ellis Plantation, with the Imperial Hotel in New York City.
Around the turn of the 20th century, most of the sugarcane crops were destroyed by a harsh winter. As part of the Kempner-Copenhaver agreement, Copenhaver moved to the site to serve as general manager and build the company-owned town of Sugar Land.
The trains running through Sugar Land are on the route of the oldest railroad in Texas. They run adjacent to the sugar refinery, west of the town, and through the center of what used to be known as the Imperial State Prison Farm. It operated with convict lease labor. Between the end of the Civil War and 1912, more than 3,500 prisoners died in Texas as a result of the convict leasing program. Archaeologists have uncovered unmarked graves of African Americans from this period in the region around Sugar Land's prison and sugar factory. Since the early 21st century, this area has been largely redeveloped as the suburban planned community of Telfair.
From the 1910s until 1959, Sugar Land was a self-contained company town. Imperial Sugar Company provided housing for the workers, encouraged construction of schools, built a hospital to treat workers, and provided businesses to meet the workers' needs. Many of the original houses built by the Imperial Sugar Company remain in The Hill and Mayfield Park areas of Sugar Land, and have been passed down through generations of family members.
During the 1950s, Imperial Sugar expanded the town by developing a new subdivision, Venetian Estates, which featured waterfront homesites on Oyster Creek and on man-made lakes.
Development of city
As the company town expanded, so did the interest of establishing a municipal government. Voters chose to make Sugar Land a general-law city in 1959, with T. E. Harman becoming the first mayor.
In the early 1960s, a new subdivision development called Covington Woods was constructed. Later that year, the Imperial Cattle Ranch sold about 1,200 acres (490 ha) to a developer to create what became Sugar Creek in 1968. As a master-planned community, Sugar Creek introduced the concept of country club living to Sugar Land. Custom houses were built to surround two golf courses, and country clubs, swimming pools, and a private home security service were part of the amenities developed.
The success of Sugar Creek, buoyed by the construction of U.S. Highway 59, quickly made Sugar Land's vast farmlands attractive to real-estate developers for residential housing. In 1977, development began on First Colony, a master-planned community encompassing 10,000 acres (4,000 ha). Developed by a Gerald Hines-led consortium that became known as Sugarland Properties Inc., development on First Colony would continue over the next 30 years. The master-planned community offered homebuyers formal landscaping, extensive green belts, a golf course and country club, lakes and boulevards, neighborhood amenities, and shopping.
Around the same time as First Colony, another master-planned community development called Sugar Mill was started in the northern portion of Sugar Land, offering lakefront and estate lots. The master-planned communities of Greatwood and New Territory, at the time situated west of the city in what was then its extraterritorial jurisdiction, also began to be developed by the end of the 1980s.
In addition to the development of master-planned communities targeted at commuters from Houston, Sugar Land began attracting the attention of major corporations throughout the 1980s. Fluor Daniel, Schlumberger, Unocal, and others began to locate offices and facilities in the city. This resulted in a favorable 40/60 ratio of residential to commercial tax base within the city.
In 1981, a special city election was held for the purpose of establishing a home-rule municipal government. Voters approved the adoption of a home-rule charter, which established a mayor-council form of government, with all powers of the city vested in a council composed of a mayor and five councilmen, elected from single-member districts.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.