Texas is a state in the south-central United States of America.
Texas is nicknamed the Lone Star State because it has only one
star on its flag. Texas has the second largest area of any US
state after Alaska and the second largest population after
California. With 254 counties, Texas has the most counties of
any state in the United States.
Texas borders Mexico to
the south. This makes up about half of the border between the
United States and Mexico. Texas also borders the states of
New
Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north,
Arkansas to the
northeast, and Louisiana to the east.
North Texas (Lubbock, Amarillo, Wichita Falls)
Great Plains,
Cotton and the Llano Estacado landscape formation.
Prairies and Lakes (Dallas, Fort Worth)
Lakes promising
relaxation and exciting nightlife.
Pine forests
(Nacogdoches, Tyler)
Pine forests, swamps, and civil war and
civil rights history.
Gulf Coast (Houston, Galveston,
Beaumont)
Islands, beaches and port cities.
South
Texas Plains (San Antonio, Laredo)
Border area on the Rio
Grande, Spanish missions.
Hill Country (Austin,
Fredericksburg)
Edwards Plateau, rolling hills, rivers and
the capital.
Big Bend Country (El Paso, Odessa)
Big
Bend National Park, Mountains, Desert and Canyons.
1 Austin - Live Music Capital of the World. capital of the state.
University of Texas (5th largest in the US by student population).
2
Dallas - one of Texas' most popular travel destinations.
3
El Paso -
the largest city on the Mexican border.
4 Fort Worth - "where the
west begins".
5 Houston - largest Texas city and home of NASA's
Control Center.
6 San Antonio - famous for the Alamo and the River
Walk district.
7 Amarillo - wide open city; on the edge of the Great
Plains.
8 Arlington - Home of the Texas Rangers.
9 Beaumont - the
birthplace of the modern oil industry is home to the Spindletop oil
field.
10 Brownsville
11 Corpus Christi - famous Gulf Coast town.
12 Fort Stockton
13 Fredericksburg - German settlement, many
festivals.
14 Galveston - important port city and tourist
destination.
15 Laredo - largest inland port in the United States.
16 Lubbock - Largest city on the Texas Plains.
17 Midland–Odessa -
twin cities shaped by oil.
18 Nacogdoches - "Cradle of Texas
Liberty", many historic landmarks.
19 San Angelo
Big Bend National Park is located in southern Texas and shares a 1500 km border with Mexico. Desert-like landscapes cover most of the national park area. Yuccas are eye-catching plant species, and there are many types of cacti in Big Bend National Park.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Established on October 15, 1966, Guadalupe Mountains National Park encompasses part of the Guadalupe Mountains range in western Texas. The mountains form a stark contrast to the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert. Carlsbad Caverns National Park is also located 130 kilometers to the north in this southernmost foothills of the Rocky Mountains. The park features Texas' highest point, the 2,667-meter Guadalupe Peak, and a mountain called El Capitan, which has long been a landmark for travelers on an ancient trail later used by the Butterfield Overland stagecoaches. The remains of an old stagecoach station survive near the Pine Springs Visitor Center.
As in all states of the USA, English is also spoken in Texas. Spanish is also widely spoken, being the mother tongue of around 30% of the population.
By plane
The easiest way to arrive is via Dallas/Fort Worth
Airport (IATA: DFW), American Airlines hub, or Houston/George Bush
Intercontinental Airport (IATA: IAH), United Airlines hub. Both are
among the largest airports in the USA and are also served directly from
Central Europe (e.g. Frankfurt am Main).
Other important
airports, which are more accessible by domestic flights or connecting
flights, are located in Austin (AUS) and San Antonio (SAT) and El Paso
(ELP). The legacy airports of Dallas (DAL; Love Airport) and Houston
(HOU; Hobby Airport) are used by budget airlines such as Southwest
Airlines.
In view of the dimensions of Texas and the lack of fast
train connections, one usually flies as close as possible to the desired
destination, if necessary with transfer connections.
By train
Several long-distance Amtrak lines run through Texas: The Texas Eagle
from Chicago via St. Louis to Dallas and San Antonio, also three times a
week from Los Angeles via Tucson; the Sunset Limited from New Orleans or
Los Angeles via Phoenix and Tucson to Houston and San Antonio; and the
Heartland Flyer from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth.
By bus
All
major cities in Texas are serviced by the Greyhound network buses.
Megabus operates bus routes from Chicago to Dallas via St. Louis,
Memphis and Little Rock, and from New Orleans to Houston and San
Antonio.
Long distances within Texas can be covered by plane, for example from
Dallas to Houston or San Antonio.
Long-distance trains run from
the Dallas/Fort Worth area to San Antonio in South Texas, and from the
Gulf Coast to the Big Bend region and the "Far West" of Texas. This mode
of transport is particularly useful if you have enough time and want to
see some of the countryside. From Dallas to San Antonio you drive z. B.
10 hours, from Houston to El Paso more than 13 hours. Train travel is
not cheap, you should book as early as possible to secure savings.
All major and medium-sized cities are connected by long-distance
buses. The largest provider is Greyhound. Between Dallas, Houston,
Austin and San Antonio, Megabus is an alternative. For example, driving
from Dallas to Houston takes 4-5 hours and costs at best $17 (Megabus)
or $21.50 (Greyhound); Houston to San Antonio about three to 3½ hours,
from $10.
Incidentally, the car (rental car) is the means of
choice to be individually mobile.
In Texas, the barbecue (BBQ for short) plays an important role in everyday life. Northeast of Austin, Taylor hosts the annual International Barbeque Cook Off, a celebration of creative BBQ food. Texas is also known for its chilli dishes. The state's cuisine has a Mexican influence, so chicken fried steak is a specialty.
Position
Texas is located in the southern United States and is
bordered by Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, Louisiana
to the east, Mexico to the southwest, and New Mexico to the northwest.
climate
Texas can be divided into three different climate zones:
A zone in the west determined by a dry continental climate, a
subtropical zone in the south and a maritime to temperate subtropical
zone in the east.[3] The division into different sub-regions depends on
the criteria according to which they are made. A simple breakdown by
major regions distinguishes between East Texas, the Gulf of Mexico
region, South Texas, West Texas, North Texas and Central Texas.
landscapes
Landscape-oriented classifications tend to be finer -
partly because of the many different landscapes and ecoregions that
exist in Texas. Major landscape zones here are the East Texas Piney Wood
or Forest region, the Gulf Coast Prairie region, the lower and upper Rio
Grande valleys, the Trans-Pecos region to the southwest, the High Plains
to the west with the two Llano sub-regions Estacado in the middle and
Texas Panhandle to the north, and finally the Blackland Prairie and
Edwards Plateau in the Texas heartland.
The landscape and the
type of economic use change according to the outlined eco-zones: from
the coast, which is bordered by lagoons for almost its entire length, a
relatively flat area stretches 50 to 100 kilometers inland, some of
which is very fertile and suitable for suitable for the cultivation of
cotton, sugar cane and, in places, rice. Rising behind is an undulating
hilly country, up to 200 miles wide, encompassing the entire north-east
of the state and mostly covered by prairies. The northwestern part of
the national territory is mountain and highland and consists in part of
a 1300 meter high desert sandstone plateau (Llano Estacado).[5][6] The
north, also called the Texas Panhandle, is very fertile and used for
cattle ranching. Oil was mined throughout the south and west until the
early 1980s.
Texas is rich in rivers, although few are navigable
year-round. The Red River separates it from Oklahoma and Arkansas, the
Sabine from Louisiana, and the Rio Grande from Mexico. Other important
rivers are the Colorado River, the Pecos River and the Brazos River.
Houston is the largest city in the southeast of the state. The
second largest city, San Antonio, is to the south, while Dallas, the
third largest city, and Fort Worth are to the northeast. El Paso is on
the extreme west and Corpus Christi is on the south on the Gulf Coast.
Outline
Texas is divided into 254 counties. These are most of the
counties in a state in the USA.
prehistory
The oldest datable finds of human artifacts in North
America were made in Texas. At the Buttermilk Creek Complex in Bell
County, certain stone implements and flakes have been discovered to lie
between 15,500 and 13,200 years before present, underlying a Clovis
culture find horizon.
Texas is located in two of the North
American cultural areas, on the one hand prairies and plains, on the
other hand the southwest. The Texan Paleo-Indians from 9200 to 6000 B.C.
were related to the Clovis culture and that of Folsom. They left their
mark primarily to the north, in present-day Alibates Flint Quarries
National Monument. They made a living from hunting mammoths and bison
(bison latifrons). The oldest finds are the Midland Man, found in
Midland County in 1953, a female found near Leander in Williamson County
in 1983, and a male and boy near Waco. Around 4000 BC BC petroglyphs
appeared on the Pecos River. The first corn farmers lived around 1500
BC. on the lower Pecos.
Around 500 BC A sedentary culture
developed in the east, which was under the influence of the Mississippi
region, beyond the Rio Pecos the Mogollon culture dominated.
After 700 the bow began to displace the spear thrower (Atlatl) and
pottery was made. The trade in obsidian reached as far north as the
Rocky Mountains and in the south mainly as far as Teotihuacán. Between
about 800 and 1500 the so-called Buried City existed, stone dwellings
southeast of Perryton in Ochiltree County.
The Plains Village
People, who lived around 1150 to 1450, are believed to be the ancestors
of the Caddo, Pawnee and Wichita. They lived in permanently inhabited
large villages, whose houses consisted of one, but also of up to a
hundred rooms. Before 1500 they were driven westward, probably by
Apaches.
When the Spaniards arrived, the cultures were divided
into numerous ethnic groups of different composition. They included the
Alabama, Apache, Atakapan, Bidai, Caddo, Coahuiltecan, Comanche,
Cherokee, Choctaw, Coushatta, Hasinai, Jumano, Karankawa, Kickapoo,
Kiowa, Tonkawa, and Wichita.
Today in Texas there are only three
tribes recognized by the federal government in the 1960s and 1970s, the
Alabama-Coushatta, formed from the merging of a group of the Alabama
with the Coushatta, the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas (on the Rio
Grande in the Maverick County), and the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in El Paso
and Socorro. There is also a South Texas subgroup of the Kickapoo Tribe
of Oklahoma. They had been expelled from the Republic of Texas to Mexico
in 1839.
Spaniards
In 1519 the Spaniard Alonso Álvarez de
Pineda was the first to map the Texas coast. This was also the beginning
of the Spanish occupation of the territory. In 1528, the Spaniard Cabeza
de Vaca was shipwrecked off the coast of what is now Galveston. A small
group of survivors marched across the Indian lands to Mexico City and
later spread the legend of the "Seven Cities of Gold." The Spanish
adventurer Coronado, attracted by this story, traversed western Texas
and parts of present-day New Mexico all the way up to Kansas. Although
he did not find the golden cities, the rumor persisted through the
centuries.
In the years that followed, many towns and, above all,
missions emerged in today's state territory of Texas. In 1621, Spanish
immigrants founded the town of Corpus Christi de la Isleta. El Paso
followed in 1659.
A French attempt to colonize Texas territory
occurred in 1685. Adventurer Robert Cavelier de La Salle sailed into
Matagorda Bay and founded Fort St. Louis there. However, the settlement
suffered greatly from Indian attacks, disease and the loss of important
material through shipwrecks. Just two years later, La Salle was murdered
by his own people while trying to get help. St. Louis was subsequently
abandoned; Texas was Spanish again. However, the French were able to
hold their own in the settlements in the Mississippi Delta. From 1686 to
1689, Alonso de Leon, governor of Coahuila, searched the French colony
and found few survivors.
In the course of another Spanish
expedition, several mission stations were founded. This is how the
Mission of San Antonio de Valero came into being in 1718. Over 100 years
later, this mission went down in history as The Alamo. In 1786 Pedro
Vial found a path from San Antonio to Santa Fe, but it did not gain
importance as a trade route.
Mexico
In 1821 Texas became part
of Mexico, which had become independent from Spain. Many adventurers
from the United States gathered here during the Mexican War of
Independence. In 1823, after North American Colonel Stephen F. Austin
received permission from the central government of Mexico to settle in
Texas with 300 families, he founded the city of San Felipe de Austín.
The arrangement with Austin was very simple. He had to exchange his US
citizenship for a Mexican one and was therefore subject to Mexican
jurisdiction. More and more settlers from the north reached the Gulf of
Mexico. It was the beginning of Anglo-American colonization, by 1835
about 45,000 people from the North had settled in Texas.
Tensions
between American settlers on the one hand and the Mexicans and the
Mexican government under President General Santa Anna on the other
became increasingly acute when Mexico outlawed slavery. Because the
United States wanted to buy the entire state of Texas, Mexican state
authorities banned further immigration from the United States in 1830.
Religious, cultural and political problems in particular seemed
insurmountable. But new laws and regulations granted Texas settlers so
many exemptions and freedoms that tensions eased and 1835 was a
relatively quiet year at first. However, US land speculators fueled
mistrust of Mexico. When Stephen F. Austin was arrested during a visit
to Mexico City and spoke out against staying in Mexico due to personal
disappointment, separatists saw their chance. After Austin's return,
they declared Texas' secession from Mexico at a hastily called meeting.
Shortly thereafter, Santa Anna sent troops (about 5,000 men) to Texas.
The Texan War of Independence began on October 2, 1835 with the Battle
of Gonzales.
Republic of Texas
On March 2, 1836, the Texans,
relying on the support of the Democratic Party in the United States,
which advocated the proliferation of slave states, proclaimed the
independent Republic of Texas and appointed General Sam Houston as
military commander-in-chief. The Mexican army under Santa Anna occupied
San Felipe de Austín, the capital of Texas, in the course of
hostilities.
On March 6, 1836, the mission city of Alamo was
taken by the Mexicans after a 13-day siege. All of the approximately 190
defenders were killed, including Davy Crockett, James Bowie and William
Travis.
The approximately 1,600-strong Mexican troops were
surprisingly defeated by the Texans under Sam Houston on April 21, 1836
in the Battle of San Jacinto. Mexican President General Santa Anna was
captured. In the years that followed, the Mexican government attempted
to reverse Texan independence through further military expeditions, but
failed.
Texas was recognized as an independent republic by France
and the United Kingdom on November 23, 1839 and November 14, 1841,
respectively. Sam Houston became the first president of the independent
nation and republic of Texas. Stephen F. Austin became Secretary of
State for his state, but died of lung disease just two months after
taking office.
Domestically, the young Republic of Texas was
divided into two camps. A group led by Sam Houston advocated rapid
accession to the United States. The other group, led by Mirabeau B.
Lamar, the second President of the Republic, wished to avoid such a
move. Instead, an expansion of the Republic of Texas to the Pacific was
considered. Texas was supposed to form a kind of buffer state between
Mexico and the United States. Finally, the group around President
Houston, who had held this office with interruptions until shortly
before the merger with the USA and also became governor of the US state
from 1856 to 1861, prevailed.
US state
The country was annexed
by the US on February 19, 1845; the US Congress approved the annexation
on March 1, 1845, and on December 29, 1845 voted to admit Texas into the
Union. The Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, which ended on
February 2, 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Mexico renounced
its claims to Texas and the area between the Rio Grande and the Nueces
River, but the United States government, by resolution of September 7,
1850, ceded part of that area to New Mexico, which had since been
annexed to the Union as a territory. Texas received $10 million in
compensation for this.
The victory of Abraham Lincoln, known for
his strict principles on the slave issue, in the presidential election
of November 6, 1860, triggered the secession of the slave-holding
southern states from the Union, beginning with South Carolina on
December 20, 1860. Texas, whose declaration of resignation resolved at a
convention in Austin on February 1, 1861, was approved by referendum on
February 23 and thus came into force on March 2, was the seventh and
last southern state to sign up before Abraham Lincoln took office on
March 4. March and the beginning of the Civil War left the Union and
joined the Confederate States of America founded in February 1861 (see
also: Texas Germans in the American Civil War). After the end of the
Civil War in 1865, US President Andrew Johnson installed Unionist Andrew
Jackson Hamilton as provisional governor of Texas. The process of
Reconstruction ended for Texas on March 30, 1870, with the reinstatement
of Texas representatives in the United States Congress.
To this
day, the flawed modern myth persists that Texas is the only US state
that has the right to leave the United States at will because it was
admitted to the Union by treaty.
German immigrants
German
immigrants have significantly shaped the US state. Caroline Ernst and
her family were the first German settlers. An enthusiastic letter from
her father to Germany in 1832 was one of the triggers for German
involvement in Texas.
Organized German immigration began in the
1830s in 1834 and is largely due to the Giessen Emigration Society and
the Association for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas, also
known as the Mainzer Adelsverein. After the March Revolution of 1848,
some of the Forty-Eighters followed.
At the beginning of the 20th
century, about 100,000 Texans were German speakers. Most settled in
central Texas in the so-called Texas Hill Country, the German Hills in
the area of Austin and San Antonio. Early settlements were the Latin
Settlements, founded by German emigrants. Above all, the influence of
the First World War led to a significant decline in the German language.
The German-English mixed dialect is also called Texas German.
The
influence of German immigrants can be seen in place names such as New
Braunfels (founded in 1845 by Carl Prinz zu Solms-Braunfels, a member of
the Mainzer Adelsverein) and the name of the Schlitterbahn water park.
In New Braunfels, about 40 miles south of the capital Austin, the
Wurstfest is celebrated every year. In the district of Gruene, founded
in 1872 by Henry D. Gruene, is the oldest surviving dance hall in Texas,
the Gruene Hall. It is now a historic venue for live music and dance
events.
Also near Fredericksburg (founded in 1846 and named
"Friedrichsburg" in honor of Prince Friedrich of Prussia (1794-1863),
another member of the Mainzer Adelsverein) is a German colony. The local
chamber of commerce greets visitors on the Internet with "Welcome", and
some restaurant menus are bilingual.
Also known here was the
settlement of Luckenbach, which was mentioned in a song performed by
Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson entitled Luckenbach, Texas. The song
reached #1 on the US country charts. Up to 20,000 Texans still speak
German today.
Sorbs from Lusatia also emigrated to Texas in
significant numbers in the middle of the 19th century and founded, among
other things, the settlement of Serbin there under the leadership of Jan
Kilian. Although the inhabitants have not spoken Sorbian for a long
time, e.g. the Texas Wendish Heritage Museum and a Wendish Heritage
Society remember this chapter of Texas history.
Constitutional law
In Texas law, the sunset clause applies.
Electoral College
Texas has had a total of 38 electors in the
Electoral College since 2012, and the number has increased in the past
as the Texan population grew faster than that of the entire United
States.
Political landscape
Politically, Texas has been a
Republican stronghold since the 1970s. Only the Democratic presidential
candidates John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert H. Humphrey and
Jimmy Carter have been able to win in Texas since the early 1960s. After
that, however, the Republicans in Texas usually won by a clear margin.
Today's strongholds of the Democrats are the counties between San
Antonio and the Mexican border as well as the counties in the El Paso
and Houston area.
Texas is now considered the stronghold of
American conservatism in Europe. From 1874 to 1979, as part of the Solid
South, all governors belonged to the Democratic Party, which was then
pursuing conservative and racist politics in the southern states. This
only changed with the civil rights movement, when the Dixiecrats
switched to the Republicans and the former Abraham Lincoln party thus
became attractive to racist voters. Presidents George W. Bush and his
father George HW Bush made careers in Texas. In the USA, Texas is viewed
as conservative through and through, but states such as Mississippi and
Alabama still rank well ahead of Texas in the internal view.
Since the mid-2000s, however, a demographic change has been looming in
Texas, which is why it can no longer be clearly assigned to the
Republicans. While Texas-born George W. Bush was more than 20 percent
ahead of his Democratic competitors in both 2000 and 2004—even Barack
Obama was more than 10 percent behind his rivals John McCain and Mitt
Romney in 2008 and 2012—this has changed this in the recent past. Donald
Trump was just nine percentage points ahead of Hillary Clinton in 2016,
and four years later his lead over Joe Biden had shrunk to five and a
half percentage points. Of all the states in which he received a
majority in 2020, he only narrowly won in Florida and North Carolina.
Due to this development, Texas is to be classified as a swing state in
future elections, which will be as hard fought as Florida. Since the
state has the second highest number of residents and thus electors after
California, it is essential for the Republicans to win presidential
elections. The last Republican to win a presidential election without
winning a majority in Texas was Richard Nixon in 1968.
death
penalty
In both the US and Europe, Texas stands out for its rigorous
use of the death penalty. Unlike other states, the governor of Texas
cannot grant pardons to prisoners himself. A pardon by the governor is
only possible if the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends a
pardon. If the committee says no, the governor can only delay the
execution for 30 days. When it comes to the number of foreclosures,
Texas takes the top position in the USA; from 1976 to September 2015,
528 people were executed in Texas, accounting for 37% of all executions
in the US.
children without health insurance
In no other state
did so many children live without health insurance in 2010 (14%).
Hair waivers in schools
As of 2021, half of Texas school
districts have policies such as male students not having long hair.
Corporal punishment
Corporal punishment of students is allowed
through the so-called paddle. Texas consistently ranks among the top
five US states where most paddling is practiced.
Protection of
unborn children
In 2021, Abbott signed the Heartbeat Bill. A Texas
law passed by the Republican majority in the state legislature that
limits the right to an abortion to the time before a fetus's heartbeat
begins (which begins around 6 weeks of pregnancy). The law included a
rule that citizens could sue anyone who assisted a pregnant woman to
have an illegal abortion in Texas. If the lawsuit were successful, the
plaintiffs would receive a bounty of up to $10,000 for each illegal
abortion borne by the defendant or entity. Through this civil law
regulation, the decision Roe v. Wade of the United States Supreme Court
to be circumvented. Since these 2022 by the decision Dobbs v. Jackson
Women's Health Organization was suspended, imprisonment is again
threatened. Abortion before the heartbeat begins is also a punishable
offense. Abortion is only punishable if the life of the pregnant woman
is at risk.