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Texas 
Famous
for may things: Cowboys, Oil men, Ranchers, History, Hospitality
Economy:
Cattle, Oil, Gas, Fishing, Mineral, Cotton.
Texas stands apart from the rest of the United States. its sheer size, eight hundred miles from east to west and about a thousand from top to bottom
Still
cherishing the memory that it was from 1836 to 1845 an independent nation
in its own right, TEXAS stands apart from the rest of the United States.
While its sheer size - eight hundred miles from east to 
west
and nearly a thousand from top to bottom - gives it a great geographical
diversity, is firmly bound together by a shared history, culture and ideology.
Independence is key to the Texan mentality, from the overriding distrust
of government - any government - to the absence of unionized labor. As
the old anti-litter campaign put it, "Don't mess with Texas."
Preconceived ideas about what exactly is "Texan" are soon shattered. It's actually one of the most eclectic and cosmopolitan states in the Union and each of the major tourist destinations has its own distinct character. Hispanic San Antonio , for example, with its Mexican population and historic importance, has a laid-back feel absent from the big-city neurosis of Houston or Dallas , while trendy Austin revels in a lively music scene and intellectualism found nowhere else in the state.
Regional differences are vast. The swampy, forested east is more like Louisiana than the pretty Hill Country or the agricultural plains of the Panhandle , and the tropical Gulf Coast has little in common with the mountainous deserts of the west. Changes in climate are equally dramatic: snow is common on the Panhandle, whereas the humidity of Houston, in particular, is only made bearable by nonstop high-power air conditioning.
One thing shared by the whole of Texas is the constant boasting - everything has to be bigger and better than anywhere else. Such chauvinism is tempered both by a delight in self-parody and by the state's melting pot of cultures. The much-cited Texan friendliness is not imaginary; to be unwelcoming would simply be unpatriotic. Texas is, after all, named for a Native American word meaning friend, tejas , and a visit here, especially to the Panhandle or the Hill Country, is not for those who want to be alone.
Texan friendliness is not imaginary, Texas is, after all, named for a Indian word meaning friend, tejas , and a visit here, especially to the Panhandle or the Hill Country, is not for those who want to be alone.
Central Texas stretches from the prairies of the northeast through the green and fertile Hill Country into the chalky limestone landscape of the west, and includes two of Texas's most pleasant cities: San Antonio and Austin. Austin in particular, the capital city and home to the progressive University of Texas, helps to give the region an intellectual and political feel uncharacteristic of the rest of the state.
Texas is world famous for its cattle. My Grande Father John David ( Jack) Sullivan was on the last
cattle drive of long horns from Texas to Dodge city Kansas. late 1800's
Texas Long Horn Cattle
Agriculture has been the mainstay of the economy here ever since the resis-tant Comanche population was finally packed off to reservations in the 1840s. The slave-driven cotton plantations of the south and east have gone, but the small communities set up by Polish, Czech, Norwegian and Swedish immigrants in the Hill Country maintained, even until very recently, the traditions, architecture and languages of their homelands. Great cattle drives came trampling through after the Civil War and played a large part in the development of San Antonio.
Early immigration into north and east Texas , during the days of the Republic and following the devastation of the Civil War, was largely from the Southern states. In the 1930s, the northeastern oil fields near Tyler (a drab town only redeemed by its beautiful rose gardens) proved to be the richest ever found in the US. In addition to oil, agriculture has become a prime source of commerce, with logging important in the densely forested east. The grand exception is, of course, the Metroplex - the area which includes Dallas and Fort Worth . The main tourist attractions and cultural life of the region are concentrated here; but if you enjoy exploring small-town America, and have a car, the north and east can yield more subtle pleasures. The national forests of Angelina, Davy Crockett, Sabine and Sam Houston in the east offer unsurpassed opportunities for outdoor living: the forest supervisor (tel 713/632-4446) in Lufkin, midway between Davy Crockett and Angelina on US-59, has details of free and private camping facilities. Fans of the movie will want to check out Paris, Texas , northeast on US-82.
The Panhandle may hold few actual tourist attractions, but what appeals are its rural charm, its quirkiness and its distance from the eastern cities. Music has particular significance in an area famous for songwriters such as Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Waylon Jennings, Mac Davis, Joe Ely and Natalie Maines from the Dixie Chicks, although most musicians relocate to cosmopolitan centers like Austin. Above all, the exceptionally hospitable people of the Panhandle make it special, along with the starkly romantic landscape, strewn with tumbleweeds and mesquite trees.
The coastline of south Texas , which state residents half-jokingly refer to as the "Third Coast," curves from Port Arthur on the Louisiana border (a shipping and petrochemical town and the birthplace of Janis Joplin) on the much-touristed Gulf Coast , down past the urban monster of Houston, to the Rio Grande, the border with Mexico. Giant, cosmopolitan Houston dominates everything; its great wealth has led to a thriving arts scene, but ultimately it overpowers, rather than relates to, the rest of the region. Geographically and culturally, this area has two distinct faces. To the east are the seaside resorts of the prairie, rolling away from the hills and forests of east Texas. Much of the coast is feeling the strain of rapid property development, but there are still unspoiled stretches along the Padre Island National Seashore . In the south, a Hispanic influence spreads north from the fertile Rio Grande Valley. The border towns here have little charm and are only of interest as points of entry into Mexico for cheap shopping and entertainment. Uniting south Texas is the hot, swampy climate; Houston, especially, is unbearable in the summer, one reason for the mass exodus to the coast.
West Texas is the stuff of Wild West fantasy: parched deserts, ghost towns, looming mesas, and above all a sense of utter isolation. Although the area south from the Panhandle down to Del Rio on the Rio Grande is, for convenience, also known as West Texas, the fantasy really begins west of the River Pecos; you can drive for hours without a sign of life to El Paso , Texas's shabby westernmost city. Most travelers only venture into the desolation to explore Big Bend National Park , nearly three hundred miles southeast of El Paso in the curve of the Rio Grande.
Minimal rainfall and harsh land were not the only hindrances to settlement. The Apache and Comanche , though accustomed in the 1820s to trading with Mexican comancheros , were infuriated when hapless white pioneers began to trickle in during the 1830s. With their horsemanship and ability to find scarce water supplies, the Native Americans posed a real threat; upon statehood, a string of cavalry forts was set up with the help of federal money to protect Mexican and Anglo settlers from attack. As trading posts and cattle ranges began to spring up after the Civil War, the paramilitary Texas Rangers were sent out on violent vigilante missions. Eventually, as in the Panhandle, a brutal program of buffalo slaughter, supported by the US Army, starved the natives out. Not long afterwards, oil was discovered in West Texas and boom towns appeared, with all the attendant lawlessness, gunslinging and brawling.
AUSTIN was only a tiny community on the verdant banks of the (Texas) Colorado River when Mirabeau B. Lamar, president of the Republic, suggested in 1839 that it would make a better capital than swampy and disease-ridden Houston. Early building had to be done under armed guard, as angry Comanche watched from the surrounding hills, but despite its perilous location, the city thrived.
These days it wears its status as capital of Texas very lightly; sightseeing rates as a low priority against simply hanging out. Since the 1960s, this laid-back and progressive city has been a haven for artists, musicians and writers. Many visitors come specifically for the music . Local musicians are renowned for their innovative reworkings of Texas's country, folk and R&B heritage, often severing their rural roots to use Austin's enthusiastic environment as a springboard to national recognition. Janis Joplin had her start here in the early 1960s, and at the end of that decade, Austin was second only to San Francisco in its adherence to the "turn on, tune in, drop out" philosophy, with locals coining the term "headneck" to describe themselves. Musicians hungry for fame still tumble out of buses from all over Texas to seek their fortunes in the literally hundreds of live venues.
Austin is one of the few cities in the state where cycling is a viable alternative to driving. It may not have completely avoided the usual problems of urban growth - thanks to a sizeable population leap, ugly suburbs have shot up to threaten its small-town ambience - but it feels wonderfully safe for visitors, even women traveling alone, and the presence of the vast UT campus adds to the atmosphere, even if almost every shop and streetlamp is adorned with the unsightly brown and white colors of the college's Longhorns football team.
Within the city limits a great park system offers numerous hiking and biking trails and a wonderful spring-fed swimming pool. Looking further afield, Austin makes a fine base for exploring the green Hill Country that rolls away to the west.
Contrary
to popular belief, there's no oil in glitzy, status-conscious DALLAS
. Since its foundation as a prairie trading post, by Tennessee lawyer John
Neely Bryan and his Arkansan friend Joe Dallas in 1841, successive generations
of entrepreneurs have amassed wealth here through trade and finance, using
first cattle and later oil reserves as collateral. One early group of European
settlers of the 1850s - a group of French intellectuals and artists known
as the La Reunion co-operative - had to pack up and move on after a series
of summer droughts and a harsh winter; the few who stayed would include
a future mayor of Dallas. The city still prides itself on their legacy
of arts and high culture.
The power of money in Dallas was demonstrated in the late 1950s, when its financiers threw their weight behind integration. Potentially racist restaurant owners and bus drivers were pressured not to resist the new policies, and Dallas was spared major upheavals. The city's image was, however, catastrophically tarnished by the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and it took the building of the giant Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in the 1960s, and the twin successes of the Dallas TV show and the Cowboys football team in the 1970s to restore confidence. Then boom turned to crash once more. Unemployment and the demise of the fictional Ewings, not to mention an appalling crime rate, all took their toll, but the indomitable entrepreneurial spirit remains. After a slump in the late 1980s, the Cowboys are back in the big time, though their off-field antics have provided the nation's papers with some anti-Dallas copy once again.
Competitive with Houston, and smug about its cowtown neighbor Fort Worth, Dallas boasts of its "sophistication" and its "old" wealth. For all that, the stuffiness is tempered by a typically Texan delight in self-parody, and there's still fun to be had if you know where to look - especially in the alternative Deep Ellum district, with its superb restaurants and nightlife.
The
City
Downtown
Dallas is a hymn to commerce. Many of its skyscrapers are landmarks in
themselves; at night the red neon Mobil Pegasus on the 1921 Magnolia Building
on Akard and Commerce streets appears to gallop over the city,
HOUSTON is an ungainly beast of a city, confused by overdevelopment during the oil boom and then traumatized by the sudden slump of the early 1980s. It's a suffocating place, choking with traffic and high on humidity, yet for all this, its sheer energy, its relentless Texan pride, and above all its refusal to take itself totally seriously, give it a perverse appeal, while its well-endowed museums and rich nightlife mean there is always something to do. That Howard Hughes came from Houston makes absolute sense; eccentric, domineering and sordid, the millionaire typified all that makes the city intriguing.
There is no good reason why Houston exists at all; it was founded on a muddy mire in 1837 by two brothers from New York who hoped it would become the capital of the new Republic of Texas. For all their wild claims about its potential as a port, and its (imaginary) urban attractions, the more promising site of Austin was made capital in 1839. However, by then Houston had somehow established itself as a commercial center. Oil - discovered in 1901, and, like the city itself, unpredictable and heading for obsolescence - became the foundation, along with cotton and real estate, of vast private fortunes. Among the most famous of the philanthropists responsible for the development of downtown Houston was the cruelly named Ima Hogg. Her city improvement projects were largely cosmetic, however, and the contradictions of urban life are still writ large here, where abject poverty (not least among the blacks who migrated here from the rural South in the 1960s) coexists with ostentatious wealth
The
City
It's
demoralizing and unwise to try and see too much of Houston in one go; best
to concentrate on downtown or the Museum District , which can be walked
around at leisure.
The
Alamo
All
that is left of the original fort of the Alamo at the meeting of
Houston, Crockett, Bonham and Alamo streets is the chapel , with
a large arched facade of delicately carved sandstone, and the Long Barracks
, 
Starlight
Theater
Enjoy
the stars, in this glorious desert bar in the tiny West Texas ghost town
of Terlingua.
The
Menil Collection
Houston's
premier gallery
The
Sixth Floor Museum
Dallas'
Sixth Floor Museum is in the very building from which Oswald (allegedly)
shot JFK
Austin
Music
Austin
hosts the famous South by Southwest Music
Johnson
Space Center
Explore
Houston's Johnson Space Center, where you can eat lunch with astronauts
The
River Walk
Texas
offers few more romantic experiences than a riverside stroll through the
heart of San Antonio.
Rafting
the Santa Elena Canyon
The
Rio Grande rushes through this narrow gorge in remote Big Bend National
Park.
The
Stockyards
Watch
a cattle drive, or tuck into a colossal steak in this cowboy heaven.
