Texas map
The geographical location of Texas is such that it lies in both the Sothern and Western regions of the United States of America. Texas has derived its name from the spanish word tecas or tejas; which means friends, or allies. Texas has a shape of a spade. Texas declared its independence from Mexico in 1836. It remained independent as Republic of Texas for nearly a decade. In 1845, Texas emerged as the 28th state of United States. Texas has always boasted that"Six Flags" has flown over its soil: the Flag of France, the national flags of Spain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the Confederate States of America and the United States of America.
Texas has an area of about 695,622 sq km. From the geographical point of view Texas has a wide range of features. It is the south-central part of the United States of America. It is situated in the southern most part of the Great Plains. The state of Texas is bordered by Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas and Louisiana to the east, the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico to the south, and New Mexico to the west. Its capital is Austin, and its largest city is Houston.
Texas has four major physiographic divisions Gulf Coastal Plains, Interior Lowlands, Great Plains, and The Basin and Range Province. It may further be divided into North Texas, East Texas, South Texas and West Texas from the point of view of residential area. Some regions of Texas are associated with the south more than the southwest primarily east Texas and North Texas, while other regions share more similarities with the southwest than the south primarily west Texas and south Texas. The geographic, economic, and even cultural diversity between regions of the state of Texas is such that it itself is a region of its own.
The underlying structure is mostly formed by sedimentary rocks. East Texas is underlain by a cretaceos layer and younger sequence of sediments the trace of ancient shorelines east and south until the active continental margin of the Gulf
of Mexico is met. West from this crest the sediments are found to be Triassic and Permian in Age. Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rocks are found in the central and western part of the state, and oligocene volcanic rocks are found in the west Texas. Texas has no active or dormant volcanoes. But the Big Bend area of Texas is the most seismically active area, however, the area is thinly populated.
East Texas :
East Texas is the land between the Sabine and Trinity rivers and is southern in character with pine covered hills, cypress swamps and the remains of the great cotton plantations founded before the Civil War. Cotton farming has been replaced by diversified agriculture, including rice cultivation. East Texas supplies most of the states rice crop. The industrial cities of Beaumont and Port Arthur are surrounded by rice fields. The real wealth of East Texas comes from the rich oil fields. Lumbering industry has also flourished in the region.
The city of Houston is the industrial heart of the Gulf Coast. The city today is the nation's second largest port. Other Gulf ports in Texas are Galveston, Texas City, Port Lavaca, Corpus Christi, and Brownsville. The Gulf coast is a popular tourist area. The economy of the region mainly depends on heavy industry and tourism. Brownsville, the southernmost Texas City is also a shipping center for the citrus fruits and vegetables grown along the lower Rio Grande.
Blackland Prairies :
The first region to be farmed when Americans came to Texas in the 1820s was the lower Brazos and the Colorado but later on settlers moved into the rolling black land Prairies of central and north central Texas because that was the agricultural wealth of the area. The heart of this region is the trading and shipping center of Waco. At the south west extremity is San Antonio which is the commercial centre for cotton, grain and cattle. To the north, Dallas and the neighboring city of Fort Worth together form one of the most rapidly developing U.S. metropolitan areas.
High Plains :
The Balcones Escarpment marks the western margin of the Gulf Coastal Plain; in central Texas the line is visible in a series of waterfalls and rough, tree-covered hills. To the west lies the south central plains and the Edwards Plateau; they are extensions of the Great Plains but are sharply divided from the high, windswept, and canyon-cut Llano Estacado (Staked Plain) in the W Panhandle by the erosive division of the Cap Rock Escarpment.
No traces of the subtropical lushness of the Gulf Coastal Plain are found in these regions; the climate is semiarid, with occasional blizzards blowing across the flat land in winter. The Red River area, including the farming and oil center of Wichita Falls, can have extreme cold in winter, though without the severity that is experienced in Amarillo, the commercial center of the Panhandle, or in the dry-farming area around Lubbock. Cattle raising began here in the late 1870s. The economy of this section of the state is dominated by oil and grain.
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