Texas

Texas is big. With broad skies and wide plains. Texas has everything: deserts, mountains, beaches, big cities and small towns.

The Texas border with Mexico is 750 miles long. The Gulf Coast is 350 miles long. And, it borders four other states, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana. More than 20 million people call Texas home.

A city of 600,000 people, El Paso is thriving border city. Every day in El Paso there are scenes of people crossing the border to shop or sell items on the street.

The average temperature in El Paso in July is mid-90s. El Paso is one of the driest cities in Texas.

Dallas is the complete opposite of El Paso. With over one million people, Dallas is a sophisticated East Texas city. In Dallas, there is no desert. Everything is green.

Dallas is famous for its food, shopping, dancing and country clubs. It is infamous for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963 by a gun fired from the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

Even though Dallas is one of the largest cities in Texas, the capital is Austin, a small city of a half-million people on the Colorado River. The pace in Austin is slow, and people are friendly. Bicycle lanes run throughout the city and there are many parks.

In 1838, Austin was named the capital of Texas. In 1879, Texas decided to build a new state capital. The result was beautiful pink granite building – the largest state capital in the United States. It is almost as big as the US Capitol, and is, in fact three feet taller. The doors are Texas-sized, too – about nine feet tall.

This is San Antonio. The city lies on both sides of the San Antonio River.

Activity along the River Walk goes on night and day, every day. San Antonio has a unique character – a mix of American and Mexican culture and language. Life and business in San Antonio are conducted in English and Spanish.

The most famous site in San Antonio is the Alamo. About three million visitors tour the Alamo every year. In fact, the Alamo is the most visited site in Texas.

The missions in the San Antonio area are famous and quite beautiful. This is the Mission San Francisco de la Espada. Much of the courtyard is the original mission that was built in the 1700s.

Some people say that Mission San José is the prettiest of the old missions. And here is sunset at Mission Concepción.

Let’s conclude the visit to Texas in Houston, the largest city in Texas, with 1,600,00 residents. And the 4th largest city in the United States. Houston, like Dallas, is in the lush, green eastern part of the state. Unlike Dallas, Houston is near water, Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The oil boom that made Texas rich started near here and accounts for much of the growth.

Through the oil boom of the 1970s and 80s, a thousand people moved to Houston every week. Many of these people stayed even after the oil bust. Today the economy in Houston is strong. Business and weather dominate life in this big city. The humidity is always high averaging above 80 percent and there is an average of 47 inches of rain per year!

The Space Center Houston is the home of NASA – the National Aeronatics and Space Administration. Mission Control, where all the space launches are controlled, is in the Space Center.

Texas is a state with many different faces and places. The variety of people and landscapes make Texas a fascinating place to visit.

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