Antiques.

 
... so anxious is every one in Texas to give all strangers a favorable 
impression, that all statements as to the extreme profit and 
healthfulness of lands must be taken with a grain of allowance. We found 
it very difficult, without impertinent persistence, to obtain any 
unfavorable facts. 
Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas ..., 1857 

To some observers Texas is a state of mind as much as a geographically and ethnically diverse state of the Union. Stretching across some 268,000 square miles, it is a place of sharp contrasts: dark alluvial bayous, blistered desert barrens, rugged mountains, tree-dotted prairies, and the treeless short-grass country of the Panhandle.

These extremes of landscape influenced the way Texans lived their lives. The region's isolation gave them their storied individualism, its vastness their sense of the possible, and its abundant resources their swaggering attitude--whether as cattle baron, cotton king, or oil wildcatter. Out of Spanish ambitions came the life in the saddle that profoundly affected the development of the enduring legend of the Texas cowboy and the American West. But it is by no means a region populated only by the cowboy stereotype. Its large numbers of African Americans, American Indians, Mexicans, Germans, Irish, and Italians mean that there can be no one symbol of Texas--either now or in the past.

Texas encompasses not only a vast amount of space but also all the recorded history of America. Here Spanish soldiers fought and died nearly a century ...