Texas has a long and complicated history, and throughout most of it, no one could decide which country Texas should belong to. Not even Texas itself. What is clear though is the rich history of the Indigenous peoples who inhabited the land first and the clues they left behind about their culture.

In 2009, Moore Archaeological Consulting uncovered 2,000 artifacts from the Akokisa Tribe, the original inhabitants of the area we now call Harris County. The artifacts date back as far as 8,100 BCE. The Tribune reported that the Akokisa were a nomadic tribe who hunted, gathered, and as coastal peoples, harvested fish and shellfish as they paddled their giant cypress wooden canoes.

They lived largely undisturbed on the land for millennia, until European contact. The first written record of them was recorded in the journal of Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca who encountered them in 1535.

As Anglo-Americans continued to stream into Texas and make their homes along its waterways, colonization forced the Akokisas out of the region and it is thought that the survivors of the clashes were absorbed into neighboring tribes in Louisiana. As a result, the language of the Akokisa people went extinct.

By 1822, a party of pioneer settlers had arrived in Harris County by boat from New Orleans, and by 1836, the First Congress of the Republic of Texas had established Harrisburg County and the fledgling city of Houston.

Houston was declared the county seat, and over the next three years and many name and boundary changes later, lawmakers had finally settled on a shortening of the name to just Harris County. It was a county that had become the epicenter of Texas life, and all before the new territory achieved statehood in 1845.

This area of Texas has long been the place that speaks to people who are looking to relocate. The land and its unique landforms, waterways, and coastlines have always been a special place to make a home—even in modern times when finding the perfect house for sale in Harris County feels a little like striking gold.

John Richardson Harris
The name change from Harrisburg County to just Harris County was in honor of pioneer settler John Richardson Harris. According to the Handbook of Texas, put out by the Texas State Historical Association, Harris and his family were native New Yorkers and settled in Texas by way of Missouri.

Harris, and at times with the help of his brothers, Samuel, David, and William, made important contributions to the founding of Harris County. He built his house, a warehouse, and several trading posts where the influx of settlers could obtain much-needed supplies. He paid for the plotting of Harrisburg, a town he founded. With his brothers, he worked hard to establish a steam-powered saw and grist mill, a necessity of frontier-town life.

In August of 1829, Harris sailed to New Orleans to source more supplies for his mill, but he never returned. He contracted Yellow Fever in Louisiana and died.