Where Is Texas? Pattillo Higgins knew Spindletop Hill near Beaumont, Texas, like the back of his hand. In 1900, he’d been drilling for oil for years with no results. People in Beaumont were starting to call him a fool. Higgins knew that if he struck oil, it would all be worth it. He’d be rich.
Finally, on January 10, 1901, a team tried again. First, wet mud bubbled from the thousand-foot hole they had made in the ground. Then, suddenly, oil sprayed to the sky—more than 150 feet in the air! It took over a week to control the huge amount of oil spraying from the ground.
The oil drilling had been successful at last, but Pattillo Higgins wasn’t there. He’d been forced out of Spindletop Hill by others looking for oil. It was the beginning of a new chapter in Texas history.
Chapter 1Texas Land and EnvironmentA familiar saying goes, “Everything is bigger in Texas.” That’s because everything
is bigger in Texas. The state is larger than most countries and covers more than 268,000 square miles. New York, Mississippi, and Ohio combined would cover about half of Texas!
Located in the southwest region of the United States, Texas borders the states of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana, as well as the country of Mexico. Movies and television often show Texas as flat and dry. Some parts are flat and dry, but Texas also has forests, wetlands, beaches, and prairies. Its highest mountain, Guadalupe Peak, rises out of a desert to reach over 8,700 feet. Scientists have named Texas one of the states with the most diverse kinds of plant and animal life.
Deep beneath the plains, forests, deserts, and mountains, the earth holds information about prehistoric Texas. Scientists think that millions of years ago, shallow saltwater seas covered the land. As the seas dried up, they left behind salt and sediment—sand, rocks, and even once-living sea creatures. Over many thousands of years, these remains became fossils. Later, heavy rock buried the sediment along with lots of salt. The sediment didn’t move much, but the salt did. As the rocks pushed down, salt moved up toward the earth’s surface in long, skinny columns called salt domes. They could be over a mile tall—and all underground! Salt domes create pockets that act like storage tanks. When the ancient sediment and fossils decompose (or rot) and create gas or oil, the salt domes trap it. On the earth’s surface, salt domes can look like small hills.
Today, the Rio Grande forms the southern border of Texas and the border between the United States and Mexico. It is one of the longest rivers in North America at about 1,900 miles. Its name means “big river” in Spanish. The Rio Grande’s banks and beaches provide a home for hundreds of kinds of butterflies, including several species that don’t live anywhere else in the country. More than 1,000 species of plants also live along the river.
Texas’s lakes, rivers, swamps, and wetlands provide habitats (places to live) for animals like river otters, snapping turtles, and water moccasins (a species of snake with a poisonous bite). More species of birds live in Texas than in any other state. About five million migrating birds stop in the wetlands of Texas on their journeys each year. Ruby-throated hummingbirds, for instance, usually arrive in west and south Texas in the fall and build nests out of items from grass to spiderwebs!
Rainfall can be just eight inches a year in the deserts of west Texas. Yucca plants, creosote bushes, and cacti thrive alongside nocturnal animals like coyotes, scorpions, geckos, and bats in this dry climate. Animals rest during the hottest part of the day and look for food at night when temperatures are cooler. Although the desert can sometimes appear empty, many plants and animals live in its harsh conditions.
In East Texas, about sixty million acres of forest, including the Piney Woods, provide homes to animals like squirrels, cottonmouth snakes, and opossums. Prairies in northern and east-central Texas grow tall grasses and shrubs. Mockingbirds and Texas bluebonnet flowers live on the prairies.
Indigenous peoples—possibly as many as fifty different groups at various times—have lived in what we now call Texas for thousands of years. About seven thousand years ago, the Pueblo (which means village) people created villages and farmed along the Rio Grande.
Other nations like the Karankawa (say: Kuh-run-KA-wah) lived in settlements along the Gulf Coast and ate oysters and fish. Many still live on the same lands today.
Beginning about 800 CE, the Caddo Nation grew squash, beans, and maize in their villages. They traveled for trade, including to the Great Lakes, where they could get copper. The Caddo’s family-based groups, called bands, lived in large farming villages and built mounds as temples and homes of important people. Mounds were also used as tombs. Some of the Caddo’s large mounds are still visible today.
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer who became famous in the 1400s. He was paid by Spain to go to the American continents. Columbus is remembered for telling the people of Europe about a “new” part of the world as well as his violent efforts to control the land and people he met.
After Christopher Columbus’s trip to the Americas in 1492, Spain wanted to explore and claim more land there. They also hoped to find resources, like gold. Indigenous nations shared the land they had called home for thousands of years with newcomers from Europe. Sometimes they were willing, and sometimes they were forced.
The Apache (say: uh-PACH-ee) and Comanche (say: cuh-MAN-chee) Nations lived on the southern plains. The Comanche Nation arrived in Texas in the 1700s. The Apache Nation had come about a hundred years earlier.
Known for their skill with horses, both nations used bison (the very large mammal also called buffalo) meat for food and hides (skins) for clothing and tents. As nomadic nations, they did not have permanent settlements but moved from place to place. The Apache and Comanche Nations sometimes went to war with each other and other groups, especially over territory.
The name of Texas likely came from the Caddo greeting “Tay-yas, tay-yas.” Meaning
friends, it was used when Caddo people met Spanish settlers who had arrived in their lands. But things weren’t friendly between the Indigenous nations and European settlers for long.
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