About Texas

Texas takes its name from the Caddo word "taysha" or "tejas," meaning "friends" or "allies," which Spanish missionaries heard the Caddo use to greet them in the late 1600s. The Spanish recorded the greeting as "Tejas" and applied it first to the Caddo Confederacy and then to the entire region. Spain colonized the area to counter French expansion from Louisiana, establishing missions and settlements throughout present-day Texas. Texas won its independence from Mexico in 1836 and existed as an independent republic for nine years before being annexed by the United States in 1845. Its annexation helped trigger the Mexican-American War and the acquisition of the entire American Southwest.

Texas defies easy summary. It is the second largest state by area and the second most populous. It produces more oil than any other state, and more wind energy than any other state. It contains the fourth-largest city in the United States (Houston) and the fastest-growing major city in America (Austin). Its border with Mexico, 1,254 miles, shapes everything from its economy to its culture to its politics.

Texas was an independent republic for nine years before joining the United States, and that history is not merely folklore, it informs how Texans govern, how they tax (no state income tax), and how they talk about themselves. The state has its own power grid, its own mythology, and an instinctive suspicion of federal authority that runs across party lines.

Modern Texas is reliably Republican at the statewide level, but its major cities, Houston, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, vote heavily Democratic. Demographic change driven by immigration and corporate relocation has made Texas genuinely competitive in presidential elections for the first time in a generation, and political analysts watch it more closely than almost any other state.