The Chronicle has an excellent article today on Wallis, TX, population 1,300, and what changes are in store for it as Houston suburbs expand westward:

“I would say we’re mostly a bedroom community,” Salazar said. “Most people think the future of Wallis is in State Highway 36’s hands but, quite frankly, I believe it is really dependent on the growth of FM 1093 that’s going to make or break Wallis.”

Texas 36 is the ribbon that runs straight through downtown — a business district that essentially comprises two blocks now — and connects Interstate 10 at Sealy to U.S. 59 at Rosenberg.

FM 1093, conversely, is just a two-lane road from Wallis to the Grand Parkway, where it begins running alongside the Westpark Tollway and eventually becomes Westheimer.

Metro still owns the abandoned rail line that runs along FM 1093 to Wallis and beyond, and Salazar is confident a widened road will keep inching westward. Fort Bend County officials already are talking about expanding the tollway to serve Fulshear and Simonton, just across the Brazos from Wallis.

At 610 and Westheimer, you’ll pass a sign saying “Fulshear 28.” Wallis is another 11 miles out. Since Fulshear isn’t suburbanized yet (although there are some subdivisions) Wallis may be waiting for a while. The Houston-Galveston Area Council doesn’t forsee population growth this far out before 2035.

But Salazar obviously understands how growth works: it’s all about transportation. Wallis was founded as a station on the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe railroad in 1880, and the San Antonio & Aransas Pass came through 7 years later. Both of those railroads became highway corridors: the GC&SF, still an active BNSF line, is paralleled by Highway 36 (above), and the SA&AP became the route for FM 1093. METRO bought 58 miles of the SA&AP right of way from roughly Kirby out to Eagle Lake (another 30 miles past Wallis) in 1992. METRO never cared about Wallis; it was the inner part of the corridor they were interested in. But now part of Wallis’ future is in METRO’s hands. And utlimately Houston politics may decide whether METRO sells this right-of-way to the Harris County Toll Road Authority, making Wallis Houston’s newest suburban frontier. Meanwhile, the Trans-Texas Corridor may make it past Wallis, too, perhaps bringing distribution warehouses and industry with it.

Ultimately, Wallis’ future isn’t in the hands of individual families looking for new place to live. It’s in the hands of developers deciding whether and where to build new tracts of houses, and those developers pay attention to transportation projects. If the Houston area decides to invest more transportation money in already developed areas and less in open fields, than Wallis in 20 years may look much like Wallis today.

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