Texas

Texas is the second-largest US state by both area and population, covering 268,596 square miles and home to about 30.5 million people. Austin is the capital, though Houston is the largest city; Texas became the 28th state on December 29, 1845, after spending nearly a decade as the independent Republic of Texas — a history still reflected in the single star on its flag.

Texas is "The Lone Star State," and its sheer size means it spans multiple genuinely distinct regions: East Texas is deeply Southern in culture, West Texas is arid high desert, South Texas borders Mexico, and Central Texas anchors the state's political and tech economy. The state legislature meets for only 140 days every two years, a design reflecting the founders' deliberate distrust of government, and the governor holds relatively limited formal powers compared to other large states.

Texas has the second-largest state economy in the country, exceeding $2 trillion — if Texas were an independent nation, its economy would rank roughly eighth or ninth in the world, ahead of Canada and Russia. The state produces about 43% of all US oil, anchored by the Permian Basin in West Texas, one of the most productive oil fields on Earth, and also leads the nation in wind energy, generating more wind power than the next four states combined. Texas has no state income tax, funding government instead through property and sales taxes, a combination that has driven substantial corporate and population migration from higher-cost states.

Texas is mostly flat to rolling plains, but the Trans-Pecos region of the far west holds genuine high-country terrain that surprises visitors expecting only desert. Guadalupe Peak (8,751 ft), the state's highest point, sits inside Guadalupe Mountains National Park near the New Mexico border, its 8.4-mile summit trail gaining 3,000 feet through a landscape where the Chihuahuan Desert spreads to the horizon in every direction. El Capitan, part of the same escarpment, towers 1,000 feet above the desert floor and is visible for 100 miles.

Big Bend

Big Bend National Park, straddling the Rio Grande at the Mexican border, is the most spectacular and least-visited of Texas's national parks, combining Chihuahuan Desert, the Chisos Mountains, and dramatic river canyons into one of the wildest landscapes in the country — fewer than 500,000 people visit each year, remarkable for its size and beauty. Santa Elena Canyon, where the Rio Grande cuts a 1,500-foot-deep gorge with Mexico on one wall and Texas on the other, delivers one of the most vertigo-inducing views in any national park in the country.

Hill Country and Palo Duro

The Texas Hill Country, sitting atop the limestone Edwards Plateau, is beloved for its swimming holes — Hamilton Pool Preserve, a collapsed grotto near Austin, and Barton Springs Pool, a natural 68-degree swimming pool that's been a community institution in the middle of Austin since the 1830s. Enchanted Rock, a massive pink granite dome near Fredericksburg rising 425 feet above the surrounding terrain, is famous for the creaking and groaning sounds it makes at night as it contracts after cooling. In the Panhandle, Palo Duro Canyon — the "Grand Canyon of Texas" — runs 120 miles long, up to 20 miles wide, and 800 feet deep, remarkably uncrowded compared to Arizona's more famous version.

Marfa and the Piney Woods

Marfa, a tiny West Texas ranching town of roughly 1,700 people, became an unexpected international art destination in the 1970s when minimalist artist Donald Judd installed large-scale works in the surrounding desert through the Chinati Foundation — the unexplained Marfa Lights add a layer of mystery to the mix. In East Texas, Caddo Lake offers an entirely different landscape of cypress trees draped in Spanish moss and bayou channels, the closest Texas comes to genuine swamp country.

Texas has four of the ten largest cities in the United States, and its rapid growth is reshaping the country's economic and demographic landscape.

Houston and San Antonio

Houston, the largest city in Texas and fourth-largest in the country, is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in America — no single racial or ethnic group holds a majority — and is home to the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world, alongside NASA's Johnson Space Center and a thriving energy industry. Notably, Houston has no formal zoning code, one of the only major American cities without one. San Antonio, the second-largest city, has a majority-Hispanic population and deep military ties through five active installations, its identity built around the Alamo and the River Walk.

Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin

The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metro area in Texas and the fourth-largest in the country; Dallas serves as North Texas's financial and commercial hub, while Fort Worth, its western twin, retains a distinct identity centered on the historic Stockyards. Austin, the state capital and the fastest-growing large city in Texas through much of the 2010s, is home to the University of Texas and a booming tech sector that includes Dell (founded there), Tesla's Gigafactory, and a major Apple campus.

El Paso and the Border

El Paso, separated from the rest of Texas by hundreds of miles of desert, forms a binational metro of about 2.7 million people with Ciudad Juárez across the Rio Grande — one of the largest metro areas on any international border. Laredo hosts the busiest cargo border crossing in the entire United States, moving hundreds of billions of dollars in goods between the US and Mexico annually.

The Economy

Energy has defined the Texas economy for more than a century — the Permian Basin in West Texas remains one of the most productive oil fields on Earth, and the state also leads the nation in wind power generation. Technology has become a genuine second pillar, particularly in Austin, where Dell, Tesla, Apple, and Oracle have all established major operations. The Texas Medical Center in Houston, with more than 60 institutions and over 10 million patient visits a year, anchors a massive healthcare and life-sciences sector, and Texas leads the nation in cattle, sheep, goat, and cotton production, with agricultural output exceeding $25 billion annually.

The University of Texas at Austin, the flagship of the UT System, enrolls roughly 50,000 students and ranks among the top public universities in the country, with the McCombs School of Business and Cockrell School of Engineering both highly regarded. Texas A&M University, the state's land-grant institution in College Station, is exceptionally strong in engineering and veterinary medicine, its research enterprise exceeding $1 billion in annual expenditures, and its Corps of Cadets tradition remains a defining feature of campus culture. Rice University in Houston, a small private research university with only about 4,000 undergraduates, consistently ranks among the top 20 nationally, with a distinctive residential college system and strong ties to the Texas Medical Center for pre-med research.

At the high school level, the School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas ISD is consistently ranked first in Texas and frequently in the national top five, an IB magnet with a near-100% four-year college acceptance rate. The High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston ISD is one of the most nationally recognized arts high schools in the country — Beyoncé is among its most famous alumni — and BASIS charter schools in San Antonio and Austin bring a rigorous, internationally benchmarked STEM curriculum to the state's charter landscape.

Texas is large enough that a serious visit means choosing one region rather than trying to see the whole state in a single trip.

San Antonio and Historic Sites

San Antonio is the most historically significant city in Texas: the Alamo, where 200 Texian and Tejano defenders held off the Mexican army for 13 days in 1836, anchors San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site spanning five 18th-century missions, and the River Walk runs 15 miles of restaurants and shops along the San Antonio River below street level. Fredericksburg, settled by German immigrants in 1846, retains its German character in architecture and food, and the surrounding Hill Country wine region has grown to more than 50 wineries.

Big Bend and Marfa

A Big Bend loop through Marfa, Alpine, and the national park itself — with stops at the Chisos Basin, Santa Elena Canyon, and the McDonald Observatory's public star parties — is the defining West Texas road trip, easily deserving four or five days given the distances involved.

Family Weekends

Space Center Houston, NASA's Johnson Space Center visitor complex, features the actual Space Shuttle Independence mounted on a full-size 747 replica and the restored 1969 Apollo Mission Control room. New Braunfels, on the Comal and Guadalupe Rivers, is the undisputed tubing capital of Texas and home to Schlitterbahn, consistently voted the country's best water park, and Fossil Rim Wildlife Center in Glen Rose lets visitors hand-feed giraffes and rhinos from their car window at a 1,800-acre drive-through safari park.