211 Fun Facts About Texas

Which city on the Texas border has a federal building that stands in two states at once?

Texarkana was founded in 1873 where tracks laid across Texas were to meet a line coming through Arkansas; its main street, State Line Avenue, follows the border, and the federal building stands astride it.

Who was the first elected president of the Republic of Texas?

Sam Houston won the September 1836 vote on his fame as the victor of San Jacinto, defeating two rivals; he returned to the presidency in 1841.

What is the official state flower of Texas?

The Bluebonnet won a heated 1901 debate in which future vice president John Nance Garner praised the cactus so warmly that he was 'Cactus Jack' for life.

How many national flags have flown over Texas?

Six flags have flown over Texas, one for each nation that has ruled it; the phrase later gave a Texas-born theme-park chain its name.

What is the official state motto of Texas, adopted in 1930?

'Friendship' became the motto in 1930 as a nod to the state's name, usually traced to a Caddo word, rendered tejas by the Spanish, that meant friends or allies.

What is the official state insect of Texas, chosen in 1995?

The monarch butterfly got the title because, lawmakers noted, it descends on Texas each autumn for a last rest and feeding before the final leg of its flight to the mountains of Mexico.

Which of these is the official state snack of Texas?

Tortilla Chips and Salsa were named state snack in 2003 because, the Legislature said, they are folk foods that became commercial giants and are embraced by Texans of every background.

What is the official state fruit of Texas?

Ruby Red Grapefruit, officially the Texas red grapefruit, became state fruit in 1993; the variety began in the late 1920s as a chance mutation on a single tree and earned the first grapefruit patent.

Which bird is the official state bird of Texas?

The Northern Mockingbird was chosen in 1927 because, the resolution said, it is 'a fighter for the protection of his home, falling, if need be, in its defense, like any true Texan'.

Which animal is recognized as the official small mammal of Texas?

The armadillo got the title in 1995 but is a relative newcomer: before the 1850s it was found only along the lower Rio Grande, and it has been spreading north ever since.

Which Spaniard, shipwrecked on the Texas coast in 1528, became one of the first Europeans to live in and cross Texas?

Cabeza de Vaca survived for years among native peoples as a trader and healer, then walked with three companions to Spanish Mexico, arriving in 1536.

What was La Salle actually looking for when he mistakenly planted a French colony on the Texas coast?

La Salle sought the mouth of the Mississippi but overshot it, landing far to the west at Matagorda Bay, which he at first took for one of the river's outlets; his colony collapsed within a few years.

Mexico's 1824 constitution merged Texas with which neighbour into a single state?

Coahuila was joined to Texas as the state of Coahuila y Tejas; when Texans asked for a state of their own in 1833, the envoy who carried the request to Mexico City was arrested on his way home.

The first colonists to receive land grants in Mexican Texas in the 1820s are known by what name?

The Old Three Hundred took up a grant Spain had first made to Moses Austin; he died before using it, and his son had to win Mexico's approval all over again.

The Texas Revolution began on October 2, 1835, at Gonzales, when Texans refused to hand back what?

A small cannon, lent by Mexican authorities in 1831 for defence against raids, was the prize; the Texans' refusal to return it gave rise to the 'Come and Take It' flag.

Where did delegates adopt the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836?

Washington-on-the-Brazos hosted the convention in an unfinished building; two weeks later the delegates left in haste as Santa Anna's army approached.

How long did the siege of the Alamo last before Santa Anna's final assault?

The siege lasted 13 days, ending in the assault of March 6, 1836; Travis's pleas for reinforcements brought only 32 men from Gonzales through the Mexican lines.

Which frontiersman and former Tennessee congressman died defending the Alamo in 1836?

David Crockett lost his House seat in 1835 and told voters they could go to hell and he would go to Texas; he reached San Antonio only weeks before Santa Anna did.

Which Texian colonel surrendered the force later shot at Goliad in 1836?

James Fannin surrendered after being surrounded at Coleto Creek; a week later more than 300 of his men were marched out and shot, though General Urrea had urged clemency.

What name is given to the panicked flight of Texas settlers eastward ahead of Santa Anna?

The Runaway Scrape became a general flight when the Texian army, learning at Gonzales that the Alamo had fallen, retreated east; families kept going until news of San Jacinto turned them back.

How long did the decisive Battle of San Jacinto last on April 21, 1836?

The fighting took about 18 minutes and was wildly lopsided: hundreds of Mexican soldiers died for fewer than a dozen Texans, and Santa Anna was captured the next day.

What was Santa Anna wearing when he was captured the day after San Jacinto?

Santa Anna had swapped his finery for a private's uniform jacket, but the disguise failed when other Mexican prisoners cried out in recognition of their commander.

Two cannon that opened the Battle of San Jacinto, a gift from Cincinnati, were nicknamed what?

The Twin Sisters, a pair of cannon paid for by the citizens of Cincinnati, later vanished; their fate is so debated that the hunt for them has been called the search for the Texas Holy Grail.

The treaties Santa Anna signed to end the Texas Revolution are named after which coastal town?

The Treaties of Velasco, signed on May 14, 1836, were declared void within days by Mexico's government because Santa Anna had signed them as a captive.

What nickname did the Republic of Texas's paper money earn from its ink?

Redbacks, first issued in 1839, were worth only about 37 cents on the dollar from the start and had lost almost all their value within three years.

The 'Father of Texas' died in December 1836 after two months in which office?

Stephen F. Austin became Secretary of State of the Republic after losing the 1836 presidential election, the winner offering him the post; he died in office at 43.

Which leader of the Republic of Texas moved its capital to the new frontier town of Austin in 1839?

Mirabeau B. Lamar had the capital built on the exposed western frontier; his successor thought it so unsafe that he tried to move the government away in 1842.

The Republic of Texas's 1836 national flag, a gold star on blue, was named for which member of its interim government?

The Burnet Flag, named for interim president David Burnet, was adopted in December 1836; the Lone Star Flag replaced it as the national flag in 1839, though it lived on as the war flag.

Which European power recognised the Republic of Texas in 1839 and built a legation in Austin?

France signed a treaty with Texas on September 25, 1839; two years later its envoy quit Austin after a feud with an innkeeper over marauding pigs, the so-called Pig War.

Which state joined the Union just before Texas, earlier in 1845?

Florida became the 27th state on March 3, 1845; Texas followed on December 29 and, as a former republic, skipped the territorial stage that Florida had passed through.

Which US president signed the Texas annexation resolution on March 1, 1845, days before leaving office?

John Tyler signed the joint resolution three days before leaving office; the Senate had rejected his 1844 treaty, so he used a resolution needing only simple majorities.

Who was the last president of the Republic of Texas?

Anson Jones, president from December 1844, presided at the February 1846 handover to the new state government, declaring 'The Republic of Texas is no more.'

Until the Compromise of 1850, Texas claimed which city that is now another state's capital?

Santa Fe lay inside the Rio Grande boundary Texas claimed, and the state even organised a Santa Fe County in 1848; in 1850 it dropped the claim for $10 million, which went toward the old republic's debts.

Which river did Mexico insist was Texas's true southern border, in the dispute that led to the Mexican-American War?

Mexico held that the Nueces, not the Rio Grande, bounded Texas; the fighting began in 1846 when Mexican cavalry ambushed a US patrol in the disputed strip between the two rivers.

Texas's 1861 secession took effect on the 25th anniversary of which event?

The independence declaration was adopted on March 2, 1836; the secession convention voted 166 to 8 on February 1, 1861 and set March 2 as the day the break would take effect.

Where in Texas was the last land battle of the Civil War fought, in May 1865?

Palmito Ranch, near Brownsville, saw a Confederate victory on May 12–13, 1865, more than a month after Lee's surrender; the Union's 2nd Texas Cavalry took part.

Juneteenth commemorates General Gordon Granger's 1865 emancipation announcement in which Texas port city?

Granger's General Order No. 3 was read in Galveston on June 19, 1865, nearly two and a half years after Lincoln's proclamation; Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021.

Which Houston congresswoman won national fame in the 1974 Nixon impeachment hearings and keynoted the 1976 Democratic convention?

Barbara Jordan, elected in 1972 as the first Black woman sent to Congress from a Southern state, told the televised hearings her faith in the Constitution was whole, complete and total.

What did Galveston build after the 1900 hurricane, the deadliest natural disaster in US history?

A seawall 17 feet high went up along the Gulf front, and the city then pumped in sand to raise its own ground level by as much as 17 feet, jacking up more than 2,000 buildings to do it.

The Spindletop gusher that started the Texas oil boom in January 1901 was near which city?

The gusher on Spindletop Hill, just south of Beaumont, blew for nine days from January 10, 1901 before it was capped; the Texas Company, later Texaco, and Gulf Oil both grew out of the field.

Which mining engineer drilled the Spindletop discovery well?

Anthony F. Lucas, the country's foremost salt-dome expert, kept drilling when most geologists dismissed his theory; the original hunch belonged to local promoter Pattillo Higgins.

Which oil tycoon bought out 'Dad' Joiner's 1930 East Texas discovery well?

H. L. Hunt took over Joiner's well and leases weeks after the strike with $30,000 down, the base of a fortune that later let his son found the American Football League.

Whose 1823 call to arms do the Texas Rangers trace their unofficial founding to?

Stephen F. Austin called in 1823 for ten men 'to act as rangers' for the colony's defence; the force was formally constituted in 1835 and later hunted Sam Bass and John Wesley Hardin.

The Comanche domain that long covered much of West Texas and the southern Plains is known by what name?

Comancheria is what historian Pekka Hämäläinen calls an empire: from the 1750s to the 1850s its mounted raiders and traders dominated the Southwest and much of the commerce of the southern Plains.

Which trail carried Texas cattle to the Kansas railhead at Abilene after 1867?

The Chisholm Trail is named for Jesse Chisholm, a Scottish-Cherokee trader whose wagon road the herds followed; he died in 1868, just as the cattle drives were getting under way.

Ysleta, often called Texas's oldest town, was founded by refugees from which 1680 uprising?

The Pueblo Revolt drove the Spanish down the Rio Grande, and the Tigua people who came south with them settled Ysleta; its mission, begun in 1682, is counted the first in Texas.

In 1842 Angelina Eberly fired a cannon to stop men hauling what out of Austin?

The archives stayed in Austin after this 'Archive War': the Republic's president had sent men to cart the papers away, but vigilantes chased down the wagons and brought them back.

Which Texas governor was wounded in the same car as Kennedy in Dallas in 1963?

John Connally survived his wounds, went on to serve as Richard Nixon's Treasury secretary and then switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party.

Which company built its Starbase rocket launch site at Boca Chica, on the southern tip of Texas?

SpaceX now launches its giant Starship rockets from the site, and in May 2025 the community around it was incorporated as a new Texas city, also called Starbase.

What do the three colours of the Texas flag officially represent?

Bravery, purity and loyalty were assigned to red, white and blue only by the 1933 Texas Flag Code; for decades before that, a legal slip had left Texas with no official flag at all.

Which state is the largest in the lower 48 after Texas?

California covers about 164,000 square miles to Texas's 268,596; Texas is big enough that its 1845 annexation terms provided for carving as many as four more states out of it.

As of 2025, which Texas city is home to the headquarters of Dell Technologies?

Round Rock sits just north of Austin, where Michael Dell started the company in 1984 from his University of Texas dorm room with $1,000 in capital.

Which fault zone divides the Texas Hill Country from the coastal plains, running past Austin and San Antonio?

The Balcones Fault forces underground water up along its line, feeding Barton Springs in Austin and the San Marcos and Comal springs to the south.

Which Comanche chief led the Quahadi band to surrender at Fort Sill?

Quanah Parker was the son of Cynthia Ann Parker, seized as a child in an 1836 raid on Fort Parker; after surrendering he prospered as a cattleman and counted President Theodore Roosevelt among his friends.

Which Native people lived along Texas's central Gulf coast when Europeans arrived?

The Karankawa, canoe-borne nomads of the bays, overran La Salle's failing French colony, sparing only a handful of children.

Which Spanish explorer created the first Texas-related document, a 1519 Gulf Coast map?

Alonso Álvarez de Pineda, sailing for the governor of Jamaica, charted the whole Gulf shore in 1519 and showed it to be a closed coast with no strait leading on to Asia.

The 1819 Adams–Onís Treaty set which river as the line between Spanish Texas and Louisiana?

The Sabine became the line when the United States gave up its claim to Texas and took Florida instead; it still divides Texas from Louisiana today.

Which treaty ended the Mexican-American War and confirmed the Rio Grande as the Texas border?

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed by an envoy the president had already recalled: Nicholas Trist ignored the order, stayed on in Mexico and closed the deal himself.

Which president ordered General Zachary Taylor to the Rio Grande in January 1846?

James K. Polk sent Taylor's army to the Rio Grande in January 1846; when Mexican cavalry ambushed a patrol there in April, he told Congress that American blood had been shed on American soil.

What did Governor Sam Houston refuse to do in 1861, costing him his office?

Houston refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy and the convention removed him on March 16, 1861; he is also said to have turned down Lincoln's offer of federal troops to keep him in office.

Which crop was Texas's leading cash crop in the late 19th century?

Cotton spread across Texas with the railroads after the Civil War; then the boll weevil crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico in the 1890s and went on to ravage fields across the South.

Horizontal drilling and which other technique revived Texas oil output after 2010?

Hydraulic fracturing was made to pay in shale by Texas oilman George Mitchell's company in the Barnett Shale during the 1990s; applied to the oil shales of the Permian Basin, it reversed more than three decades of decline.

Who was the first woman elected governor of Texas, in 1924?

Miriam 'Ma' Ferguson ran because her impeached husband, former governor James Ferguson, could not get on the ballot; she promised voters 'two governors for the price of one'.

Which Texan World War II hero became a Hollywood western star?

Audie Murphy, a sharecropper's son from northeast Texas, won the Medal of Honor for stopping an enemy tank attack almost single-handed, then appeared in some 45 films, including one about his own war.

Which waterway forms Texas's natural border with Oklahoma and Arkansas?

The Red River border saw a standoff in 1931, when Oklahoma's governor called out the National Guard to open a free bridge that Texas had barricaded on behalf of a toll-bridge company.

Which river runs through central Austin?

The Colorado River, the longest river wholly within Texas, shares only a name with the one that carved the Grand Canyon; its dams above Austin form the Highland Lakes.

Which president's wife co-founded a national wildflower research centre in Austin in 1982?

Lady Bird Johnson pushed through the 1965 Highway Beautification Act, nicknamed 'Lady Bird's Bill', to limit roadside billboards; she founded the wildflower centre with actress Helen Hayes.

Texas records more tornadoes than any other state; in which season do most of them strike?

Spring is the peak, with April, May and June the busiest months; a May 1953 tornado that killed 114 people in Waco prompted a warning conference that led to a national weather-radar network.

Which Texas port town was destroyed by hurricanes in 1875 and 1886 and never rebuilt?

Indianola, where the Army landed its experimental camels in the 1850s, was one of the two busiest ports in Texas until the 1875 hurricane; another storm and a fire in 1886 finished it.

Where did Hurricane Harvey make landfall in 2017 as a Category 4 storm?

Harvey came ashore near Rockport on August 25, 2017 with 130 mph winds, then stalled near the coast and dropped more than 60 inches of rain on parts of southeast Texas.

Which of these Texas cities averages less than 10 inches of rain a year?

El Paso sits in true desert, where the farm fields along the Rio Grande grow under irrigation.

Which interstate forms the Dallas-to-Houston side of the 'Texas Triangle'?

I-45 never leaves Texas, running from Dallas to the Gulf coast; when millions fled Hurricane Rita in 2005 it jammed so badly that the governor ordered every lane to carry traffic away from the storm.

How many counties does Texas have, more than any other state?

Texas has 254 counties; Loving County is the only one organised twice, first in 1893 in what appears to have been a land swindle, and it still has fewer than 100 residents.

Census estimates for 2022 showed which group had become the largest share of Texas's population?

Hispanics and Latinos reached 40.2 percent of Texans in the 2022 estimates, edging past non-Hispanic whites at 39.8 percent, who had been the largest group since at least 1850.

Refugees from which country settled on the Texas Gulf coast after 1975, many of them becoming shrimpers?

Vietnam's refugees met hostility from rival fishermen, and in 1981 they went to federal court and won an order barring the Ku Klux Klan from harassing their boats.

Which pastor moved Houston's Lakewood Church into the former arena of the NBA's Rockets in 2005?

Joel Osteen had been the behind-the-scenes producer of his father's television broadcasts and took over the pulpit only after his father's death in 1999; the converted arena seats some 16,000.

Texas's 2025 gross state product of $2.9 trillion exceeds the GDP of which country?

Brazil's economy was about $2.3 trillion in 2025 to Texas's $2.9 trillion, even though Brazil, with some 213 million people, has nearly seven times the population.

What single segment makes up the largest share of Texas agricultural receipts?

Beef cattle dominate: cattle sales made up $15.5 billion of the $32.2 billion Texas farms sold in 2022, nearly half, in a state where grazing land makes up most of the farm and ranch acreage.

Which West Texas city at the heart of the Permian Basin is nicknamed the 'Tall City'?

Midland, the Permian Basin's oil-office hub, earned the nickname Tall City for downtown towers rising from flat plains; George W. Bush grew up there.

Which Texas agency, despite its name, regulates the state's oil and gas industry?

The Railroad Commission, created in 1891 to police rail rates, took on oil pipelines in 1917 and gave up its last rail duties in 2005; for decades its production quotas strongly shaped oil prices.

The 1923 Santa Rita No. 1 well, whose oil enriched the University of Texas, was named for the patron saint of what?

The impossible is Saint Rita's province, and the name fit: partners with no oil experience started the well in 1921 and waited until May 28, 1923 for the strike that began filling the Permanent University Fund.

Most of Texas runs on its own power grid, managed by which organisation?

ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, runs a grid kept inside state lines and so largely outside federal regulation; in the February 2021 freeze it came within minutes of a months-long collapse.

Jack Kilby built the first working example of which invention at Texas Instruments in Dallas in 1958?

The microchip, or integrated circuit, put a circuit's separate parts on a single piece of material; 42 years later it won Kilby a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

The Austin area is nicknamed what, in a nod to its tech industry?

Silicon Hills, coined in the 1990s, plays on the Hill Country setting of Austin-area tech employers such as Dell and Samsung's chip fab.

Which fighter jets has Lockheed Martin built at its Fort Worth plant?

The F-16 and F-35 overlapped in Fort Worth until 2017, when the last F-16 left the plant and its line moved to South Carolina to make room for the F-35, which first flew there in 2006.

Which Texas airport covers more land than Manhattan?

DFW International spreads over about 27 square miles, some four more than Manhattan, and runs like a city, with its own zip code, police and fire departments.

The Port of Houston is the busiest US port by what measure?

Foreign tonnage piles up at Houston because oil refineries and chemical plants line its ship channel, forming one of the biggest petrochemical complexes in the world.

Which president formally opened the Houston Ship Channel in 1914?

Woodrow Wilson opened the channel after Harris County voters backed $1.25 million in bonds to pay half the cost of dredging it, a sum that federal money matched.

Which Texas slogan began as an anti-litter campaign?

Don't Mess with Texas started on bumper stickers and then in TV spots from the state transportation department, pitched at the young men who did most of the littering.

Which Texas town claims to have hosted the world's first rodeo, in 1883?

Pecos claims the world's first rodeo, a July 4, 1883 roping and riding contest between cowboys from local ranches; the West of the Pecos Rodeo continues the tradition.

Along with the Longhorns and Aggies, which two Texas schools claim national football titles?

TCU and SMU both claim the 1935 title: SMU won their unbeaten showdown 20–14 and went to the Rose Bowl, where it lost, while TCU went on to win the Sugar Bowl.

Which Texas university houses the George W. Bush Presidential Library?

Southern Methodist University, Laura Bush's alma mater, beat finalist bids from Baylor, Texas Tech and the University of Dallas to host the library.

In 1969, Houston surgeon Denton Cooley became the first to implant which device in a human patient?

A total artificial heart kept his 47-year-old patient alive for nearly three days until a donor heart was found, showing that a machine could bridge the wait for a transplant.

Through 2024, who was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Texas?

Jimmy Carter carried Texas in 1976 with 51 percent of the vote; Ronald Reagan flipped the state four years later, and no Democrat has won it since.

Which West Texas peak is the highest point in the state?

Guadalupe Peak rises beside El Capitan, the landmark that guided travellers along the route later followed by the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoaches.

Big Bend National Park protects a vast stretch of which desert?

Chihuahuan Desert land for the park was bought up by the state of Texas, which deeded it to the federal government so that Big Bend could open in 1944.

Which mountain range lies entirely within Big Bend National Park?

The Chisos Mountains rise high enough above the desert to shelter the Colima warbler, a Mexican songbird found nowhere else in the United States.

The Texas Capitol rises higher than which other capitol?

The US Capitol stands 288 feet tall; a survey with modern instruments in 1998 put the Texas statehouse at just over 302 feet, almost 15 feet higher.

The syndicate that built the Texas Capitol was paid in Panhandle land that became which vast cattle ranch?

XIT Ranch covered the three million acres Texas traded for its Capitol; the Chicago investors gradually sold the land off, and the last XIT cattle went in 1912.

The 'sunset red' granite of the Texas Capitol came from a mountain near which Hill Country town?

Marble Falls lies beside Granite Mountain, whose owners gave the stone free; convicts quarried it and a specially built railroad hauled it away.

Which pharmacist created Dr Pepper in Waco in the 1880s?

Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist at Morrison's Old Corner Drug Store, mixed the formula in 1885; the drink went national at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.

Dr Pepper's commercial debut in 1885 preceded which rival by one year?

Coca-Cola followed in 1886, a year after patrons at a Waco soda fountain began ordering the new Dr Pepper by asking the pharmacist for 'a Waco'.

Whataburger opened its first restaurant in 1950 in which Texas city?

Corpus Christi was where Harmon Dobson and Paul Burton opened the stand; Dobson wanted a burger so big it took two hands and made customers say 'What a burger!'

Which animal is Buc-ee, mascot of the Texas chain Buc-ee's?

Beaver was founder Arch Aplin's nickname from childhood; he blended it with Buck, the name of his Labrador, to christen the chain.

Which vehicles does the Texas chain Buc-ee's ban from its travel centers?

18-wheelers are turned away because Buc-ee's does not see itself as a truck stop: it is built for ordinary motorists and has no fuel pumps for big rigs.

Blue Bell Creameries was founded in 1907 in which small Texas town?

Brenham farmers founded it in 1907 as a creamery that turned their surplus cream into butter; ice cream came in 1911, and the name Blue Bell, after a Texas wildflower, in 1930.

Which Texas supermarket chain began as the grocery Florence Butt opened in Kerrville in 1905?

H-E-B takes its initials from Howard E. Butt, Florence's youngest son, who took over in 1919; she had started the store with a $60 loan on the ground floor of the family home.

Which snack did brothers Neil and Carl Fletcher introduce at the State Fair of Texas?

Corn dogs, sold as Fletcher's Corny Dogs, reached the fair around 1942, when the brothers were winding down stage careers that had included acting at the fair itself.

Which giant cowboy figure began life in 1949 as a Santa Claus built to lure shoppers to Kerens, Texas?

Big Tex was bought by the State Fair of Texas for $750 in 1951, once Kerens tired of its Santa, and a Dallas artist rebuilt him as a cowboy in time for the 1952 fair.

Which make of car stands half-buried, nose down, at a famous Texas Panhandle roadside artwork?

Cadillac Ranch was planted in 1974 by the art collective Ant Farm for its patron, Stanley Marsh 3; visitors are welcome to spray-paint the cars, so their colours never last.

A fake boutique of which luxury brand has stood alone beside a West Texas highway since 2005?

Prada let the artists Elmgreen & Dragset use its name, and Miuccia Prada chose the shoes and handbags on show; thieves emptied the shop the night it opened.

Caddo Lake straddles Texas's border with which state?

Louisiana shares the lake, which geologists think formed when a vast log jam on a nearby river backed water up into a low-lying basin; a dam now holds its level.

Enchanted Rock, the great dome rising from the Texas Hill Country, is made of which stone?

Pink granite gives the dome its legends: it creaks and groans on cool nights as the rock contracts after a hot day, sounds the Tonkawa are said to have feared.

Austin's Congress Avenue Bridge was renamed in 2006 for which governor?

Ann Richards, governor from 1991 to 1995 and a long-time Austin resident, died in September 2006; the city council renamed the bridge for her that November.

Roughly how many bats spend the summer in Bracken Cave near San Antonio?

15 million is the count from Bat Conservation International, which owns the cave, once each mother bears a single pup in June; some estimates run to 20 million.

The Astrodome's record crowd of 68,266 came to see which country star in 2002?

George Strait drew the crowd at the last Houston rodeo held in the Astrodome; the show was released as a live album.

Which Apollo mission radioed Mission Control in Texas with the words 'Houston, we've had a problem'?

Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert spoke the line in April 1970 after an oxygen tank exploded; it is usually misquoted as 'Houston, we have a problem'.

Which Texas city owns the stadium where the NFL's Cowboys play their home games?

Arlington voters approved a half-cent sales tax in November 2004 to fund the city's share of the stadium, which the city owns and the Cowboys operate.

Austin's Circuit of the Americas was the first US track purpose-built for which racing series?

Formula One first raced there in 2012 on a layout that borrows from famous tracks: one run of corners echoes Silverstone and another mimics Hockenheim's stadium section.

Which Texas ranch covers more land than Rhode Island?

King Ranch founder Richard King, a steamboat captain, came back from a cattle-buying trip to Mexico with about a hundred villagers to tend his herds; they became known as Kineños, 'King's men'.

Which convenience-store chain grew out of Dallas ice houses that began selling milk, bread and eggs in 1927?

7-Eleven took its name in 1946 from its new opening hours, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.; until then the shops had traded as Tote'm Stores.

Which Austin festival began in 1987?

South by Southwest was planned in the offices of the Austin Chronicle; organisers expected 150 people to register for the first one, and 700 showed up.

On leaving the Astrodome in 2003, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo moved where?

Reliant Stadium, the NFL's first with a retractable roof, opened next door in 2002 for the Texans, the expansion team that replaced the club Houston lost in the 1990s.

NASA's Mission Control sits in which Houston-area community named for a lake?

Clear Lake grew up around the space centre, which was built in the early 1960s on land that Humble Oil donated through a local university.

In which Texas city is The Star, the headquarters and practice home of the NFL's Cowboys?

Frisco has housed the Cowboys' headquarters at The Star since 2016; the complex's indoor stadium also hosts the city's high school football games.

What were the Astros originally called when they entered the National League in 1962?

Houston entered the National League in 1962 as the Colt .45s and became the Astros on moving into the Astrodome in 1965.

What is the name of the University of Texas's live Longhorn steer mascot?

Bevo made his debut at the 1916 Thanksgiving game; weeks later, Texas A&M pranksters branded him '13–0', the score of the Aggies' 1915 win over Texas.

What does a startled nine-banded armadillo do that so often gets it killed on Texas roads?

Jumps straight up: the reflex can lift it three or four feet, which on a highway carries it into the underside of a passing car.

Central Texas barbecue grew out of 19th-century meat markets run by which immigrant groups?

German and Czech butchers smoked the meat they could not sell fresh so that it would keep, and the smoked leftovers sold so well that their markets began to specialise in them.

Which spice, introduced by Spanish immigrants to Texas, is common in Tex-Mex but less so in Mexico?

Cumin is credited to the Canary Islanders who settled San Antonio in 1731; it became a Tex-Mex signature, while cooking in most of Mexico uses it sparingly.

Which Texas blues guitarist starred in the first TV spot for the state's anti-litter campaign in 1986?

Stevie Ray Vaughan performed 'The Eyes of Texas' in the spot, which first aired during a college bowl game on New Year's Day 1986.

Which Texian leader rallied volunteers to storm San Antonio in December 1835 and was killed in the fighting?

Ben Milam rallied volunteers with 'Who will go with old Ben Milam into San Antonio?' and was killed by a sniper on December 7, 1835, days before General Cos surrendered the town.

Which word in the state song 'Texas, Our Texas' was replaced with 'boldest' in 1959?

Largest stopped being true when Alaska joined the Union in 1959, so composer William J. Marsh rewrote the line of the song Texas had adopted 30 years earlier.

What is the official state dish of Texas?

Chili was sold from open-air stands on San Antonio's plazas by the city's 'chili queens' in the late 1800s, and state lawmakers named it the official dish in 1977.

Along with Texas, which other state flag once served as a national flag?

Hawaii's flag flew over an independent kingdom and then a republic, and it was kept unchanged when the islands became a US territory and later a state.

Which South American country's flag is so like the Texas flag that Texans often post its emoji by mistake?

Chile's flag looks so alike that, with no Texas flag emoji to choose, a 2017 resolution filed in the Texas House urged Texans to stop using Chile's in its place.

Which canyon in the Texas Panhandle is often called the Grand Canyon of Texas?

Palo Duro Canyon ranks second in size among US canyons; in 1876 cattleman Charles Goodnight drove a herd into it and founded the JA, the Panhandle's first commercial ranch.

Which religious group was besieged near Waco for 51 days?

The Branch Davidians' standoff began with a failed raid by ATF agents on February 28, 1993 and ended on April 19, when fire destroyed the compound.

The Dallas plaza where JFK was shot is named after which local figure?

George Dealey ran the Dallas Morning News, which took on the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, and he had campaigned to revive the area where the plaza was later built.

The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas occupies which former building?

The Texas School Book Depository, from whose sixth floor Oswald fired, was bought by Dallas County in 1977 amid calls to tear it down; the museum opened in 1989.

What Spanish nickname did Mexicans give the Texas Rangers during the Mexican-American War?

Mexican soldiers and civilians called the Rangers 'Diablos Tejanos', Texan Devils, for their ferocity during the Mexican-American War of 1846–48.

Selena married which guitarist from her band in 1992?

Selena eloped with Chris Pérez, guitarist in Selena y Los Dinos, on April 2, 1992, over her father's initial objections.

What nickname did media give Selena for her clothing choices?

The 'Tejano Madonna' label came from her daring stage outfits; fashion became a second career, and in 1994 she opened her own Selena Etc. boutiques.

Which Austin venue in a converted armory did Willie Nelson often play after moving there in 1972?

Willie Nelson's shows at the Armadillo World Headquarters, a converted armory open from 1970 to 1980, helped fuse hippies and rednecks into Austin's outlaw-country scene.

Which of these standards did Willie Nelson write?

Willie Nelson wrote 'Crazy' in 1961 and Patsy Cline made it a hit; 'Funny How Time Slips Away' and 'Hello Walls' were his too.

Buddy Holly was born in 1936 in which Texas city?

Lubbock's Charles Hardin Holley lost the 'e' from his surname in 1956, when his first recording contract misspelled it, and he kept the new spelling.

Which tiny Texas Hill Country hamlet did Waylon Jennings make famous with a 1977 hit song?

Luckenbach became a national legend through the song, though Jennings later wrote that he knew it was a hit even though he didn't like it.

San Antonio was named in 1691 in honour of which figure?

A Spanish expedition reached the river on June 13, 1691, the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padua, and named it San Antonio in his honour.

Which organic grocery chain opened its first store in Austin in 1980?

Whole Foods Market nearly died young: a 1981 flood wiped out the uninsured store's stock, and customers and neighbours pitched in to clean up and reopen it.

Which airline began in 1971 by flying only between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio?

Southwest Airlines' first flight left Love Field in Dallas on June 18, 1971, and the carrier stayed inside Texas until 1979 before spreading across the country.

Which pirate ran a smuggling base on Galveston Island?

Jean Lafitte, who had sided with the United States at the Battle of New Orleans, took over the island in 1817 and ran smuggling and privateering from it until the American government forced him out.

El Paso sits across the border from which Mexican city?

Ciudad Juárez was itself called El Paso del Norte until 1888, when it was renamed for Mexican president Benito Juárez and the Texas city across the river kept the old name.

Which island, running more than 100 miles along the South Texas coast, is often called the world's longest barrier island?

Padre Island takes its name from Padre José Nicolás Ballí, a priest who once owned it; a dredged ship channel now cuts it into north and south halves.

As of 2022, Texas alone produced more than a quarter of all US electricity from which renewable source?

Wind farms spread across West Texas once the state finished some 3,500 miles of new power lines in 2014, a $7 billion project to carry their output to distant cities.

The Guadalupe bass, Texas's state fish, is native to the streams of which region?

The Edwards Plateau is the heart of its native range, though small populations live beyond it; the state has stocked over 2.4 million fingerlings to keep its rivers supplied.

Bavarian brewmaster Kosmos Spoetzl bought the brewery in which small Texas town, now famous for its bock beer?

Shiner's brewery was struggling when Spoetzl leased it in 1914 and bought it a year later; he kept it alive through Prohibition by selling ice and near beer.

Which corn chip did Charles Elmer Doolin start making in his mother's San Antonio kitchen in 1932?

Fritos began when Doolin answered a newspaper advert and paid $100 for the recipe, a converted potato ricer and 19 store accounts from a man heading home to Mexico.

Which Houston university opened in 1912 on the fortune of a founder murdered by his valet?

Rice University's founder, William Marsh Rice, died in 1900 in a plot by his valet and a lawyer who forged papers to seize the estate; the lawyer was sentenced to death, then pardoned.

Which Texas city lay on the old Route 66?

Amarillo, a major stop where Route 66 crossed the Panhandle, began as Oneida; its new name, Spanish for yellow, probably came from the yellow soil or wildflowers along a nearby creek.

Which West Texas town, founded in 1883 as a railroad water stop, is now known for minimalist art?

Marfa changed course in the 1970s, when sculptor Donald Judd began buying up buildings there, among them an old army fort, to house large permanent artworks.

Which city hosts the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show, held since 1896?

Fort Worth's first show in 1896 was held under shade trees beside Marine Creek, with no buildings, no pens and no admission charge.

Which Texas county, seated at Houston, is the most populous in the state and third most populous in the nation?

Harris County is named for John Richardson Harris, who founded the town of Harrisburg on Buffalo Bayou in 1826.

Which West Texas county, home to Big Bend National Park, is the state's largest by area and bigger than Connecticut?

Brewster County covers 6,192 square miles, over three times the size of Delaware. Its seat, Alpine, was still called Murphyville when the county was formed in 1887.

Which county east of Dallas is the smallest in Texas by area, covering under 150 square miles?

Rockwall County and its seat are both named for a wall-like underground rock formation that runs throughout the area.

Which West Texas county on the New Mexico line, with only 64 residents in 2020, is America's least populous?

Loving County is named for cattleman Oliver Loving, who drove herds through the area in 1866 on what became the Goodnight–Loving Trail. Mentone is its only community.

Which Texas county, seated at San Antonio, was once so vast that 128 other counties were carved from it?

Bexar County was named for San Antonio de Béxar, one of the 23 Mexican municipalities of Texas at the time of its independence.

Which Texas Panhandle county, seated at Hereford, honors a famous scout of the Texas Revolution?

Deaf Smith County honors Erastus "Deaf" Smith, a partially deaf soldier of the Texas Revolution. Lawmakers named it in 1876, but it was not organized until 1890.

Which southernmost Texas county, seated at Brownsville, is home to SpaceX's Starbase launch site?

Cameron County is named for Ewen Cameron, a soldier of the Texas Revolution who later joined the ill-fated Mier Expedition.

Most of which South Texas county, seated at Kingsville, lies within the famed King Ranch?

Kleberg County was organized in 1913 and named for early settler Robert J. Kleberg. The ranch is so large that it also spills into neighboring counties.

Which Rio Grande Valley county, home to McAllen, is named for the priest who launched Mexico's fight for independence?

Hidalgo County honors Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, who raised the call to break from Spain. Its seat is Edinburg, even though McAllen is its largest city.

In every Texas county, an elected county judge acts as chief executive and presides over which governing body?

Commissioners court is its name, yet the body sets budgets and county policy rather than trying cases. The judge votes alongside four precinct commissioners and has no veto.

Which county north of Dallas is named, like its seat McKinney, for a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence?

Collin County and its seat both honor Collin McKinney, who helped draft the declaration and, in his late sixties, was the oldest of the 59 men to sign it.

Which Texas county southwest of Houston, seated at Richmond, includes the city of Sugar Land?

Fort Bend County is named for a blockhouse that once stood at a curve of the Brazos River.

Which county north of Houston, seated at Conroe, contains most of the planned community of The Woodlands?

Montgomery County was created by the Congress of the Republic of Texas in December 1837 and takes its name from the town of Montgomery.

Which North Texas county shares its name with its seat, home to the University of North Texas?

Denton became the seat in 1857 after two earlier towns had held the role, and gained a second campus when Texas Woman's University was founded in 1901.

Which Central Texas county, named for a Scottish settler, has Waco as its seat and largest city?

McLennan County honors Neil McLennan, an early settler on the Texas frontier, and anchors a metropolitan area that also takes in Falls and Bosque counties.

Which border county has as its seat Laredo, once capital of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande?

Webb County is named for James Webb, a federal judge in Florida who became a cabinet officer of the Republic of Texas. Laredo grew into the largest inland port on the Mexican border.

Which West Texas county, seated at Odessa, is home to the Permian High School of Friday Night Lights fame?

Ector County is named for Confederate general Matthew Ector. Its school district runs the high school whose football team inspired a book, a film and a TV series.

Which Texas county, seated at San Marcos and home to Texas State University, is named for a famed Texas Ranger captain?

Hays County honors John Coffee Hays, a frontier captain who fought in the Comanche wars and then served as an officer in the Mexican–American War.

Johnson City, hometown of President Lyndon Johnson, is the seat of which Hill Country county?

Blanco County takes its name from the Blanco River, which runs across it, and its seat only moved to Johnson City in 1890.

Which Hill Country county and its seat share a name and the title Cowboy Capital of the World?

Bandera earned the title as a staging area for the last great cattle drives of the 1800s, which set out along the Great Western Cattle Trail.

El Paso and Hudspeth are the only Texas counties that entirely observe which time zone?

Mountain Time governs the state's western tip, and a corner of neighboring Culberson County around Guadalupe Mountains National Park keeps it too.

Palo Duro Canyon lies in which Texas Panhandle county, whose seat is home to West Texas A&M University?

Randall County is named for Horace Randal, a Confederate brigadier general killed at the Battle of Jenkins Ferry. Its seat is the aptly named town of Canyon.

Which West Texas county, seated at Abilene, is named for three brothers who died at the Alamo?

Taylor County honors Edward, George and James Taylor, who all fell in the 1836 siege, and it anchors the Abilene metropolitan area.

Which North Texas county, seated at Bonham, honors the Texian commander whose men were killed in the Goliad Massacre?

Fannin County honors James Fannin. Its seat is named for James Bonham, the Alamo courier who rode to ask Fannin for help that never came.

Dwight Eisenhower, the first president born in Texas, was born at Denison in which county on the Oklahoma line?

Grayson County's Denison sits just south of the Red River, and the house where he was born in 1890 is now a state historic site.

Which Big Bend-region county has as its seat Marfa, the art town known for its mysterious desert lights?

Presidio County takes its name from Presidio del Norte, a border settlement now called Ojinaga on the Mexican side. Scientists blame the glow on distant car headlights.

Judge Roy Bean ran his saloon courtroom at Langtry, in which Texas border county seated at Del Rio?

Val Verde County, whose name means "green valley", was named for a battle of the Civil War.

Ballot Box 13, which decided Lyndon Johnson's 87-vote win in a 1948 Senate primary, came from which South Texas county?

Jim Wells County's Precinct 13 added 202 late votes six days after the polls closed, 200 of them for Johnson, and suspicions of fraud never went away.

Which Texas county contains the State Capitol, the Governor's Mansion and the main University of Texas campus?

Travis County was established in 1840 and named in honor of William Barret Travis, who commanded the Texian forces at the Battle of the Alamo.

Before coming to Texas, the victorious general of San Jacinto had been elected governor of which other state?

Tennessee elected him governor in 1827, and he remains the only person ever elected governor of two different states.

Hours after President Kennedy was shot, his successor took the oath aboard Air Force One at which Dallas airport?

Love Field was the scene on November 22, 1963, after the new president was driven there in an unmarked police car, kept below window level the whole way.

Which Houston energy-trading company collapsed in 2001 in what was then the largest bankruptcy in US history?

Enron was formed in 1985 when Kenneth Lay merged Houston Natural Gas with InterNorth, and its fall was also branded the biggest audit failure of its day.

Which space shuttle broke apart over Texas during re-entry in February 2003, killing all seven astronauts aboard?

Columbia had been doomed since launch, when a piece of insulating foam broke off the external tank and damaged the heat shield on the left wing's leading edge.

Captured Texans of the ill-fated Mier Expedition drew beans from a pot to decide who died; which color meant execution?

Black beans numbered 17 among 159 white ones, and the seventeen men who drew them were allowed to write letters home before facing a firing squad.

In the 1850s the US Army shipped which animals to Texas to test them as pack animals in the Southwest?

Camels landed on the Texas coast in 1856 with hired Arab and Turkish drivers, but the Civil War interrupted the experiment and the herd was sold at auction.

The San Jacinto column near Houston, topped by a 220-ton star, edges out which national landmark by about 12 feet?

Washington Monument stands about 555 feet to the Texas shaft's 567. The Art Deco column went up between 1936 and 1939 on the battlefield where Texas won its independence.

Which pirate ran a smuggling colony called Campeche on a Texas barrier island until a US warship ordered him out?

Jean Lafitte founded the colony in 1817 and agreed to leave without a fight in 1821, sailing away aboard his ship The Pride.

Which Houston congresswoman became, in 1976, the first woman to keynote a Democratic National Convention?

Barbara Jordan had won national fame two years earlier with her televised statement at the House hearings on impeaching Richard Nixon.

Which Gulf Coast port was devastated in 1947 when the freighter Grandcamp, loaded with ammonium nitrate, exploded?

Texas City suffered the deadliest industrial accident in US history. At least 581 people died, including all but one member of its volunteer fire department.

Before it was chosen as capital of the Republic of Texas in 1839, the village on the Colorado River was called what?

Waterloo was the name under which the riverside site was briefly incorporated in 1839, before it was renamed for the colonizer who had brought the first Anglo settlers.

After a 1937 gas leak destroyed the New London school in East Texas, what was added to natural gas within weeks?

A warning odor, from a pungent sulfur compound called mercaptan, made leaks easy to detect. Untreated natural gas has no smell or color at all.

Which woman, spared with her infant daughter when the Alamo fell, carried news of the defeat to the Texian army?

Susanna Dickinson and her daughter had sheltered in the chapel sacristy during the final assault, and reached the army at Gonzales with the news on March 13.

Which invention did Jack Kilby first build at Texas Instruments in 1958, later earning a Nobel Prize in Physics?

Integrated circuit is the formal name for the microchip, and Kilby shares credit for it with Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor.

Which Yucatán-born drafter of Mexico's 1824 constitution later served as vice president of the Republic of Texas?

Lorenzo de Zavala broke with Santa Anna, resigned his post in protest and helped draft the new republic's constitution before failing health forced him from office.

Which former Texas Ranger led the posse that tracked down and killed outlaws Bonnie and Clyde in 1934?

Frank Hamer had retired in 1932 after almost 27 years with the Rangers, though he was allowed to keep a special commission in retirement.

Which ship of the French explorer La Salle, wrecked in Matagorda Bay in 1686, was found by Texas archaeologists in 1995?

La Belle's loss doomed the explorer's Texas colony to failure. Her raised hull is now on display at the Bullock Texas State History Museum.

Which short-lived republic did empresario Haden Edwards proclaim near Nacogdoches a decade before Texas independence?

Fredonia lasted only weeks: in January 1827 Mexican soldiers and Texian militia marched in to restore order, and Edwards fled to the United States.

The first major battle of the Mexican–American War was fought in May 1846 at which site near present-day Brownsville?

Palo Alto was fought on disputed ground a few miles from the modern city, by an American army supplied through a depot near Point Isabel.

Which Central Texas county, named for the state's third governor, includes the cities of Killeen and Temple?

Bell County honors Peter Hansborough Bell and was organized in 1850; its seat is neither big city but the smaller town of Belton.

Which county south of Dallas, seated at Waxahachie, was the site of the cancelled Superconducting Super Collider?

Ellis County saw about 14 miles of tunnel bored and roughly $2 billion spent before Congress cancelled the giant particle accelerator in 1993.