Browse our selection of tours below.
Click a title to expand the accordion for a brief tour summary and link to the mobile experience.
You can also explore tour video playlists on the Texas Historical Commission's YouTube page.
From musicians to politicians, from cowboys to entrepreneurs, this rich, vibrant community played a vital role shaping the Lone Star state into who we are today.
Get ready to explore the birth of an American legend – the Texas cowboy. Follow along with one of the most famous cattle trails in history: the Chisholm Trail.
When German pioneers arrived in Texas in the 1820s, they came by the thousands, then tens of thousands – German immigrants weary of the growing oppression in their homeland but hopeful they could start a new life elsewhere.
Texas would not be Texas without the profound influence of Hispanic leaders and citizens, whose legacies form an essential pillar of Texas history. Explore these stories and discover your own connections to the rich and deeply rooted Hispanic communities of Texas.
Welcome to the Historic Bankhead Highway! One of the earliest transcontinental highways, it stretched from Washington, D.C. to San Diego, California with the Texas portion running 850 miles from Texarkana to El Paso. Often called “The Broadway of America”, the Bankhead Highway helped to transform turn-of-the-century communities into modern cities.
Two cannons found in Texas fifty miles apart: one buried in the mud twelve feet below the surface of Matagorda Bay, the other uncovered by a ranch foreman. Together, they solved a centuries-old mystery and set archeologists on a fascinating journey that continues to this day.
Most people today have never heard of the Red River War, even though this conflict changed the Southern Plains, and the United States, forever. It very well may be one of America’s most significant, and yet, most forgotten wars.
It was called “Tejas,” an enormous Mexican territory - far from civilization. And soon, an epic story would be written across this terrain. Men would conspire. Battles would be fought. And legends would be born.
Take a walk… around the squares, main streets and plazas of historic Texas towns. Some feel unchanged, some are now metropolitan, but all reveal their beginnings and evolution in the walkable cultural landscape of today. Choose from over a dozen walking tour options.
The historian John Keegan wrote, “the First World War created the modern world." In some ways, it also created modern Texas. Texas became an epicenter of military training, transforming a post-Civil War agrarian economy into a modern, industrial power. Explore Texas' war time transformations and the contributions made by Texans to the Great War.
World War Two remains vividly emblazoned on the American imagination. However, stories of American heroism abroad often overshadow the incredible efforts of soldiers and civilians on the home front. Explore the legacy of the war effort in Texas, from Navy shipbuilding yards and Army airfields to POW camps and enemy internment facilities.