Highland Tank Our Settlement is a black and white book about the history of the remaining structures in the original 1867 Settlement in Texas City, Texas 150 years after the Civil War and slavery. Each structure, place, or building is listed by its original name.

Today’s Greater Houston is a vast urban place. In the mid-nineteenth century, however, Houston was a small town – a dot in a vast frontier. Extant written histories of Houston largely confine themselves to the small area within the city limits of the day, leaving nearly forgotten the history of large rural areas that later fell beneath the city’s late twentieth century urban sprawl. One such area is that of upper Buffalo Bayou, extending westward from downtown Houston to Katy. European settlement here began at Piney Point in 1824, over a decade before Houston was founded. Ox wagons full of cotton traveled across a seemingly endless tallgrass prairie from the Brazos River east to Harrisburg (and later to Houston) along the San Felipe Trail, built in 1830. Also here, Texan families fled eastward during the Runaway Scrape of 1836, immigrant German settlers trekked westward to new farms along the north bank of the bayou in the 1840s, and newly freed African American families walked east toward Houston from Brazos plantations after Emancipation. Pioneer settlers operated farms, ranches and sawmills. Near present-day Shepherd Drive, Reconstruction-era cowboys assembled herds of longhorns and headed north along a southeastern branch of the Chisholm Trail. Little physical evidence remains today of this former frontier world.

The book includes six chapters that cover Virginia history from initial settlement through the 20th century plus one that deals with the important role of underwater archaeology. Written by prominent archaeologists with research experience in their respective topic areas, the chapters consider important issues of Virginia history and consider how the discipline of historic archaeology has addressed them and needs to address them . Changes in research strategy over time are discussed , and recommendations are made concerning the need to recognize the diverse and often differing roles and impacts that characterized the different regions of Virginia over the course of its historic past. Significant issues in Virginia history needing greater study are identified.