Where in the World is Texas

Home to the second largest U.S. state behind Alaska, Texas covers a land area of 268,820 square miles, occupying roughly 7% of the total water and land mass of the United States. Given its enormous footprint, Texas comprises eleven different ecological regions and four physical regions, including the Basin and Range Province, the Great Plains and High Plains, the North Central Plains of the Interior Lowlands and the Gulf Coast Plains. Of its nearly 28.5 million residents—including 4.1 million foreign born Americans and an estimated 1.7 million illegal aliens—the state is generally divided into North, East, Central, South and West Texas, with a diverse topography ranging from mountains, prairies, the forested hill country and coastal plains, replete with 3,700 streams and fifteen major rivers, although the state lacks a single natural lake of any kind.

A Massive Footprint

Bordered by Mexico to the south-southwest, the Gulf of Mexico to the south-southeast, Louisiana and a sliver of Arkansas to the east, Oklahoma to the north and New Mexico to the west, Texas is also home to one of the longest straight-line distances of any state, spanning some 801 miles from the northwest corner of the Panhandle to the Rio Grande river just below Brownsville, making El Paso in the western corner of the state closer to San Diego than it is to Houston near the Louisiana state line. Blessed with 367 miles of Gulf coastline, the barrier islands of Texas comprise some of the largest and most ecologically productive coastal estuaries in the continental U.S., at the same time exposing the region to repeated punishing hurricanes like the one that hit Galveston in 1900, destroying 3,600 homes and businesses at a cost of an estimated 8,000 lives.

Lone Star State

With its capital in Austin, throughout its history, Texas has been ruled by six different nations, including Spain, France and Mexico, until Texas became an independent republic in 1836, before gaining statehood in 1845 as the 28th U.S. state. Known since it’s independence from Mexico as the Lone Star State, main industries include energy, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, higher education, corporate services and biomedical sciences. Boasting an annual GDP of $2.35 Trillion, Texas ranks as the second largest economy in the U.S. behind California, making the Friendship state, an enduring symbol of independence in the American southwest.