Delve into your passion and start exploring Texas by theme. We've organized the many facets of Texas history into 14 statewide themes, each of which has a multitude of related themes that you can choose from to find relevant historic sites, maps, photos, and more. Select a theme below to get started.
Statewide Themes
WE BUILT A BIGGER TEXAS! Big dreams built the Texas towns and cities we live in today. The windswept plains, piney hollows, and coastal inlets of yesterday offered creative Texans a blank slate to imagine and manifest their greatest ambitions in...
"CUE THE MUSIC, MAESTRO. READY? DANCE!!" So you really DO think you can dance? Texas thinks you can, too! The state celebrates its music, arts, and dance year round with live performances, concerts, festivals, and a thriving historic...
GIT ALONG LITTLE...BOSSIE? Texans like to believe we invented the cattle drive, the 19th century means of moving herds of livestock to market, but "it ain’t necessarily so." In reality, cross-country cattle drives in America...
PROST! SALUD! CHEERS AND GEZONDHEID! Ask a visitor what they love best about Texas and you'll usually get one answer above all others-"The food!" Where else can you consume pork tamales, a bowl of three-alarm chili (no beans!),...
BETWEEN UNCERTAINTY AND THE RIO GRANDE "Hardly had we begun to enjoy the pleasing sensation of drifting down the stream when a roaring noise was heard ahead," geologist Robert T. Hill reported during his 1899 survey of the Lower Canyons...
MAIN STREET REPRISE Main Street was once the heart and soul of communities all across Texas. But after we began our mass exodus to the suburbs during the second half of the 20th century we saw the collapse of a lively downtown in almost every...
ROAD TRIP TO RETRO! Antique horse trails aren't the only discovery options for historic routes in Texas. We've got the Bankhead Highway and Route 66 among others, all automobile ready. Traveling the brick highways of the 1920s or stopping...
"COME AND TAKE IT!" Texans have seen their share of the battlefield. The Mexican War for Independence, the Texas Revolution, the Civil War, the U.S.-Mexico War, two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the wars in the Middle East,...
THIS LAND IS OUR LAND Although over 96% of Texas remains in private hands, we still have an amazing network of open spaces accessible to all Texans. That’s not only good for citizens, it also benefits our significant wildlife population...
SIX FLAGS AND FOUR PRESIDENTS Texas’ politics are as complex and diverse as the millions of people living across its large geographical expanse. Our political traditions date back to the Spanish colonial period and Texas Independence with...
OLD HISTORY, NEW LIFE Codifying the term "sacred places" helps us to embrace a concept that America, including Texas, is relatively unfamiliar with simply because we are much younger than our European neighbors. Across the ocean,...
YOURS, MINE, AND OURS – HISTORY IS FOR EVERYONE Victorian mansions, sacred burial mounds, important battlegrounds, and stone fortresses are among the compelling remains of our state’s great history. State historic sites populate the...
"OH GIVE ME A HOME WHERE THE BUFFALO ROAM" The history of the Texas Frontier begins almost 500 years ago in...Jamaica? Spanish explorer and cartographer Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, on behalf of the Jamaican governor (and his treasury),...
DRIVE IT, PICK IT, MILL IT, PUMP IT Can you name the four main industries that elevated Texas from a provincial outpost to a leading financial powerhouse? Cattle, cotton, lumber, and oil-the four cornerstones on which Texans built our thriving...
