Texas joined the United States of America as its 28th member state in 1845. It has the postal abbreviation TX. The state name derives from a word in a Caddoan language of the Hasinai, tejas, meaning friends or allies; Spanish explorers mistakenly applied the word to the people and their location.
Texas has borders on the west with New Mexico, on the north with Oklahoma (across the Red River), and on the east with Louisiana (across the Sabine River) and with Arkansas. To the southwest, across the Rio Grande, Texas borders the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. To the southeast of Texas lies the Gulf of Mexico.
Possessing enormous natural resources, Texas is a major agricultural state and an industrial giant. Second only to Alaska in land area, it leads all other states in such categories as oil, cattle, sheep, and cotton. Texas ranches and farms also produce poultry and eggs, dairy products, greenhouse and nursery products, wheat, hay, rice, sugar cane, and peanuts, and a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Points of interest such as the Gulf Coast resort area, the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, the Alamo in San Antonio, the state capital in Austin, and the Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
|