League City

League City is a city in Galveston County, Texas, between Houston and Galveston near the shores of Clear Lake. Live oak trees planted along its old streets more than a century ago shade the historic center.

The area was settled after the Civil War by cattle ranchers, among them George Washington Butler, who brought longhorn cattle to the prairie and planted many of the live oaks. The place was first known as Clear Creek and then as Butler's Ranch. The town was named after J. C. League, a Galveston businessman who bought land in the area and laid out a town site along the railway in 1893. It remained a small farming community until the space program and the growth of Houston brought new suburbs in the 1960s. The city charter came in 1962, around the time NASA built its center for human spaceflight at nearby Clear Lake.

South Shore Harbour, a large marina on Clear Lake, holds sailboats and motor yachts with a resort beside it.

The Butler Longhorn Museum, in the old ranch house of the family, tells the history of the longhorn cattle and the ranchers of the area. Walter Hall Park, on Clear Creek, has fishing piers, picnic areas and a boat ramp near the mouth of the creek. Big League Dreams, a sports park, has baseball fields built as small copies of famous ballparks such as Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. Clear Creek, which forms the northern edge of the city, is used by kayakers on a paddling trail through the marshes.