The Texas capital is moved from Houston…

The Texas capital is moved from Houston to Austin under a measure signed by President Mirabeau Lamar on January 14, 1839.

After then-Vice President Lamar visited the area during a buffalo-hunting expedition between 1837 and 1838, he proposed that the republic's capital, then in Houston, be relocated to the area situated on the north bank of the Colorado River (near the present-day Congress Avenue Bridge).

In 1839, the Texas Congress forms a commission to seek a site for a new capital to be named for Stephen F. Austin.

Lamar, second president of the newly formed Republic of Texas, advises the commissioners to investigate the area named Waterloo, noting the area's hills, waterways, and pleasant surroundings.

Waterloo is selected, and "Austin" is chosen as the town's new name.

The location is seen as a convenient crossroads for trade routes between Santa Fe and Galveston Bay, as well as routes between northern Mexico and the Red River.

Edwin Waller is picked by Lamar to survey the village and draft a plan laying out the new capital.

The original site is narrowed to 640 acres (260 ha) that front the Colorado River between two creeks, Shoal Creek and Waller Creek, which will be later named in his honor.

The fourteen-block grid plan is bisected by a broad north-south thoroughfare, Congress Avenue, running up from the river to Capital Square, where the new Texas State Capitol is to be constructed.

A temporary one-story capitol is erected on the corner of Colorado and 8th Streets.

On August 1, 1839, the first auction of 217 out of 306 lots total is held.

The grid plan Waller designed and surveyed today forms the basis of downtown Austin.