Stay Texas Rentals, Vacation Rentals in Texas

Texas is the second most populous and the second most extensive of the 50 United States, and the most extensive state of the 48 contiguous United States. The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in East Texas. Located in the South Central United States, Texas shares an international border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south, and borders the US states of New Mexico to the west, Oklahoma to the north, Arkansas to the northeast, and Louisiana to the east. Texas has an area of 268,820 square miles, and a growing population of 25.7 million residents. During the Spanish colonial rule, the area was officially known as the Nuevo Reino de Filipinas: La Provincia de Texas. Antonio Margil de Jesus was known to be the first person to use the name in a letter to the Viceroy of Mexico in 20 July 1716. The name was not popularly used in daily speech but often appeared in legal documents until the end of the 1800s.

The culture of Texas has been a melting pot of the "Southern" (Dixie) and Southwestern culture, with pockets of colonies of ethnic groups in some locations. Texas also has an influx of people from North America moving in to find oil. Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota have experienced a "brain drain" as their university graduates move to Texas to find jobs. There are many popular events held in Texas celebrating cultures of Texans. The annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is the world's largest known rodeo. It is held over 20 days from late February through early March. The event begins with trail rides that originate from several points throughout the state, all of which convene at Reliant Park for a barbecue cook-off. The rodeo includes typical rodeo events, as well as concert performances from major artists and carnival rides. The Fort Worth Livestock Show and Rodeo lasts three weeks in late January and early February. It has many traditional rodeos, but also a cowboy rodeo, and a Mexican rodeo in recent years that both have large fan bases.

Texas's great size and topographic variety make climatic description difficult. Brownsville, at the mouth of the Rio Grande, has had no measurable snowfall during all the years that records have been kept, but Vega, in the panhandle, averages 23 inches of snowfall per year. Near the Louisiana border, rainfall exceeds 56 inches annually, while in parts of extreme West Texas, rainfall averages less than 8 inches. Average annual precipitation in Dallas (1971–2000) was 34.7 inches in El Paso, 9.4 inches and in Houston, 47.8 inches. Generally, a maritime climate prevails along the Gulf coast, with continental conditions inland; the Balcones Escarpment is the main dividing line between the two zones, but they are not completely isolated from each other's influence. Texas has two basic seasons—a hot summer that may last from April through October, and a winter that starts in November and usually lasts until March. When summer ends, the state is too dry for autumn foliage, except in East Texas. Temperatures in El Paso, in the southwest, range from a mean January minimum of –2°C to a mean July maximum of 36°C at Amarillo, in the panhandle, from –5°C in January to 33°C in July; and at Galveston, on the Gulf, from 9°C in January to 31°C in August. Perhaps the most startling contrast is in relative humidity, averaging 34% at noon in El Paso, 44% in Amarillo, and 72% in Galveston. In the Texas panhandle, the average date of the first freeze is 1 November; in the lower Rio Grande Valley, 16 December. The last freeze arrives in the panhandle on 15 April, and in the lower Rio Grande Valley on 30 January. The valley thus falls only six weeks short of having a 12-month growing season while the panhandle approximates the growing season of the upper Midwest.

Houston: Houston, we have a problem… overpopulation, namely, which is forcing the city out of its boundaries and across the surrounding countryside at an ever increasing rate.

San Antonio: The city of San Antonio, Texas, is so heavily Hispanic that you could almost have drifted across the Mexican border already.

Dallas: A bustling city that manages to give the impression of a tight-knit small town, the ever growing and heat-ridden Texan centre of Austin lives by the motto ‘Keep Austin Weird’.

Fort Worth: If two cities were ever more opposite it would be Fort Worth and Dallas, however together they provide the perfect combination of style and arts to please everyone.

Amarillo: Located in the middle of the Texas panhandle, Amarillo is a popular stop on Historic Route 66. There's a wide range of activities to offer visitors and many are very family-friendly.

El Paso: El Paso is a city in Texas with a population of more than half a million. It is one of the most important border cities in the world due to the Ciudad Juarez-El Paso crossing every day.

Galveston: The city of Galveston on Galveston Island is only about an hour drive south of Houston and is a great place for a quick getaway.

Lubbock: Lubbock is also called the “Hub City”. This is cowboy country where you can actually ride off into the sunset, and yes this is the best place in the world for sunsets.

Plano: Mention Plano to anyone in the US and the first thing they will say is "isn't that where all the kids do heroin??" Well, there is much more to Plano than that!

McAllen: Although travelers had passed through and explored South Texas, it wasn't until the 1740's that established settlement began to dot the landscape, mostly on the south side of the Rio Grande.

New Braunfels: New Braunfels is a German settlement town that has kept many German traditions and festivals close to its heart. There Octoberfest brings people from all over the US.

College Station: College Station is most famously the home of Texas A&M and the fightin' Texas Aggies. You won't get very far into the town without being reminded of this everywhere you turn.

Kemah: The city was originally founded as Evergreen in 1898 along the Texas and New Orleans Railroad, when John Henry Kipp and James H. Bradford subdivided their lots to establish a township.

Balmorhea: Balmorhea is a nice small State Park in the foothills of the Davis Mountains in West Texas. To get there just take exit 206 off of I-10 West shortly after Fort Stockton.

Marathon: Marathon is a town of 600 persons in West Texas, situated on US 90. It is about 40 miles north of Big Bend National Park.

Groom Cross Groom, Texas: Heaven-scraping billboard of faith in the Texas panhandle.

Gene Cockrell's Yard Art Canadian, Texas: Building his own concrete statues in his yard ever since he retired in the early 1990s. Jesus, cheerleaders, dinosaurs, flying saucers...

American Wind Power Center and Museum Lubbock, Texas: Large collection of historic windmills and a modern wind turbine.

National Border Patrol Museum El Paso, Texas: US Border Patrol history -- protecting the nation's edges with its expertise and the latest technology.

Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum Crosbyton, Texas: Largest Creation Fossil Museum in the world. Run by Joe Taylor, who has devoted considerable effort to proving that Man and Dinosaur walked together.

Cadillac Ranch Amarillo, Texas: Popular Route 66 car artwork is also a spray paint free-for-all.

Devil's Rope Museum McLean, Texas: Everything you ever wanted to know about barbed wire.

Ezekiel Airship Pittsburg, Texas: A century after a preacher-inventor built an airship described in the Bible; this museum exhibits a replica near where it flew -- before the Wright Brothers!

Buckhorn Saloon and Museum San Antonio, Texas: Thousands of dead animals and dead animal parts for your enjoyment. Don't miss the 4,000-antler chandelier and the chair made for Teddy Roosevelt out of 62 pair of buffalo horns.

Dr Pepper Museums Dublin and Waco, Texas: The story of the "distinctively different" brain tonic turned soda pop is told at two museums in old bottling plants.

Texas Prison Museum Huntsville, Texas: Home of Old Sparky, the state's electric chair.

Cascade Caverns Boerne, Texas: A dinosaur and an underground waterfall await you at this cave attraction west of San Antonio.

Texans have heavily traveled their freeways since the 1948 opening of the Gulf Freeway in Houston. As of 2005, 79,535 miles of public highway crisscrossed Texas (up from 71,000 miles in 1984). To fund recent growth in the state highways, Texas has 17 toll roads with several additional toll ways proposed. In west Texas, both I-10 and I-20 have speed limits of 80 miles per hour, the highest in the nation. All federal and state highways in Texas are paved.

Texas has the most airports of any state in the nation. Largest in Texas by size and passengers served, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport is the second largest by area in the United States and fourth in the world with 18,076 acres. In traffic, DFW is the busiest in the state and the fourth in the United States, and sixth worldwide. American Eagle, the world's second largest airline in total passengers-miles transported and passenger fleet size uses DFW as its largest and main hub. Southwest Airlines, also headquartered in Dallas, has its operations currently at Dallas Love Field. It ranks as the largest airline in the United States by number of passengers carried domestically per year and the largest airline in the world by number of passengers carried. Texas's second-largest air facility is Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport with. It serves as Houston based Continental Airlines's largest hub. IAH offers service to the most Mexican destinations of any United States airport. The next four largest airports in the state all serve over 4 million passengers annually; they include: Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, William P. Hobby Airport, San Antonio International Airport, and Dallas Love Field. The smallest airport in the state to be designated an international airport is Del Rio International Airport.

Around 1,150 seaports dot Texas's coast with over 1,000 miles of channels. Ports employ nearly one-million people and handle an average of 317 million metric tons. Texas ports connect with the rest of the United States Atlantic seaboard with the Gulf section of the Intracoastal Waterway. The Port of Houston today is the busiest port in the United States in foreign tonnage, second in overall tonnage, and tenth worldwide in tonnage. The Houston Ship Channel currently spans 530 feet wide by 45 feet deep by 50 miles long.

Part of the state's tradition originates from cattle drives in which drovers herded livestock to railroads in Kansas. The first railroad to operate in Texas was the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado Railway, opening in August 1853. The first railroad to enter Texas from the north, completed in 1872, was the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad. Since 1911, Texas has led the nation in railroad length. Texas railway length peaked in 1932 at 17,078 miles, but declined to 14,006 miles by 2000. While the Railroad Commission of Texas originally regulated state railroads, in 2005 the state reassigned these duties to TxDOT.

Amtrak provides Texas limited intercity passenger rail service both in size and frequency. Just three scheduled routes serve the state: the daily Texas Eagle the tri-weekly Sunset Limited, with stops in Texas; and the daily Heartland Flyer.