Had the voting on Jan. 31, 1948, gone any differently, there's no telling how this city would look today.

A new airport site, a new home for the Houston Fat Stock Show and funding for a tunnel connecting Pasadena and Galena Park were placed in the hands of residents in a series of straw votes.

Though that was a lot for residents to consider, none of those was the biggest issue of the day.

The most contentious item was -- what else? -- zoning. It was what the Houston Post described as a "ding-dong campaign" bitterly fought by those on both sides of the issue.

The outcome of these ballot items offers up tantalizing "what if" scenarios as it relates to Houston growth.

The z-word

In his campaign to derail the zoning proposition here, oilman and philanthropist Hugh Roy Cullen called it an "un-American, German plan."

City leaders had first toyed with the idea of zoning in the late 1920s. But in what would become a recurring theme, developers and real estate interests organized against what they saw as an attack on property rights. A proposal was floated again in 1937, but, with help from Cullen, it was put to rest until after the war.

1948 would be the first time voters would have a say on the matter.

Civic clubs from River Oaks to Denver Harbor and Golfcrest supported zoning. A one-page, pro-zoning advertisement in the Chronicle said it would assure "attractive residential sections free from the noise, nuisance and fumes of commercial establishments."

But conservatives saw zoning as an affront to personal liberty and American values. Houston was doing just fine without government regulation, they reasoned.

The time for zoning here, the Post editorial board noted, had long passed as well.

"Houston is growing and spreading so prodigiously, and the uses of various areas are shifting so rapidly in pace with the times, that it is questionable whether its further development would be helped or hindered by the restraints of this plan," according to one editorial. "Could our swiftly moving modern life, with its changing habits and practices, be successfully squeezed and frozen into this elaborate pattern of land uses for private owners?"

IN 1988: See Houston as it was 30 years ago.

Jesse H. Jones' Chronicle -- which came out in support of zoning -- wrote that women would heavily favor it.

"[I]t's the women who spend their lives in the home, day after day; the men-folks just come home in the evening," wrote reporter Allison Sanders. "And the women know better than anybody else that Houston does need zoning; that without zoning the home, the environment in which they raise their children, is always under threat."

Only property owners could take part in this vote. Of the 65,000 eligible voters in Houston, just under 21,000 went to the polls.

It wasn't even close. The pro-zoning crowd could only grab 31 percent of the vote, with support coming from River Oaks and around the University of Houston.

"[T]he reasonable explanation seems to be that they were simply against giving any additional power to the government," the Chronicle noted, once all the votes had been counted.

Voters would again shoot down zoning in 1962 and 1993.

An airport in Bellaire

All three of the city's daily newspapers backed a proposal put forward by a committee led by wildcatter Glenn McCarthy to spend $1.8 million in airport bond funds for a tract of land to eventually build a new airport. The site would have been at what's now Bellaire and Bissonnet.

The Post noted that Houston's growth hinged on having a second airport "to meet the demands of the dawning age of aviation."

But to city voters, that idea wasn't going to fly. By a 2-to-1 margin Houstonians opted instead to put the money toward upgrading the existing airport on Telephone Road. Six years later, a brand-new terminal, which we now know as Hobby Airport, would go up at the site.

In hindsight, it was probably for the best, said one person familiar with aviation in Houston.

"If voters had approved a new airport to the southwest it would have stymied growth in the region," said Michael Bludworth, a historian at the 1940 Air Terminal Museum. "While the local stimulus would have been significant, the available land would have been of high cost with little ability to further expand. It would be landlocked very quickly, just like Hobby is now. In retrospect, it was good that Houston waited another 20 years before opening another airport!"

NO DOME? What if voters rejected the Dome's 1962 bond referendum?

Relocate the rodeo?

"Okay in its day!"

That's how supporters of a plan to move the Fat Stock Show to a 165-acre site off South Main described the Sam Houston Coliseum, its home since 1938.

Houston voters had three options to consider when it came to the future of the coliseum and the Fat Stock Show, now known as the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.

Option A would call for the city to spend $400,000 to purchase the property on South Main and put $1.6 million in available bond funds toward improving the coliseum.

Option B would apply all funding toward the coliseum. Forget setting up a exposition center south of the city.

Finally, Option C would put all the money toward purchasing the South Main tract and building it out as a future home for the rodeo. No money goes to the coliseum. (Rodeo officials were set to give the city the land, near where Stella Link and South Main meet, outright if voters chose this option, allowing the city to put the money toward building out the site. It came with the caveat that the rodeo have some say over development. That didn't sit well Mayor Oscar Holcombe.)

The same sentiment that struck down plans to build an airport on the southwest side carried over to this vote as well. Option 2 won out over the others, garnering 59 percent of the vote despite no one seemingly championing it.

"It was apparently the forgotten child of the campaign," the Chronicle wrote afterward. "But a majority of voters gave it their approval."

The rodeo would leave the coliseum 18 years later and move to the Astrodome. But if the other two options had won out, one has to wonder how an exposition center on South Main would have factored into business leader William Kirkland's efforts eight years later to bring major league baseball to Houston.

More money needed

Twice earlier, voters had approved bonds to fund work on the Washburn Tunnel. This time, rising costs meant more money was needed -- $3 million in county bonds -- before crews could begin construction.

Unlike the other votes, this required a two-thirds approval from voters in Harris County.

That made it a nail-biter. After a few days, it became apparent that enough voters had come out in support for the bond issue but only by a handful of votes to clear the margin.

The tunnel would open in 1950 and has carried motorists under the Houston Ship Channel ever since.

J.R. Gonzales, a third-generation Houstonian, covers local history with an eye toward the people and events that have mostly been forgotten to time. Follow him through Bayou City History on Facebook and Twitter. He can be reached at 713-362-6163 or john.gonzales@chron.com.