East Texas
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- Please note: The term eastern Texas is not a synonym for this region, and that as a proper noun east is capitalized in East Texas.
East Texas is a distinct geographic and ecological area in the U.S. state of Texas.
According to the Handbook of Texas, the East Texas area "may be separated from the rest of Texas roughly by a line extending from the Red River in north central Lamar County southwestward to east central Limestone County and then southeastward to Galveston Bay", though some separate the Gulf Coast area into a separate region. This area includes all or parts of 49 counties, totaling almost 40,000 square miles (100,000 km²) and a population of almost 6 million. Another popular, somewhat simpler, definition defines East Texas as the region between Interstate 45 linking Dallas and Houston and the Louisiana Border.
Most of the region consists of the Piney Woods ecoregion, and East Texas can sometimes be reduced to include only the Piney Woods. Houston has distanced itself from East Texas over the past fifty years; however Houston has been considered part of East Texas for most of the city's history. At the fringes, towards central Texas, the forests expand outward sparser trees and eventually into open plains.
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[edit] Geography
Climate is the unifying factor in the region's geography—all of East Texas has the humid subtropical climate typical of the Southeast. East Texas receives more rainfall, 35 to 60[1] inches (890 to 1520 mm), than the rest of Texas. In Houston the average January temperature is 50.4 °F (10.2 °C) and the average July temperature is 82.6 °F (28.1 °C), however Houston has slightly warmer winters than most of East Texas due to its proximity to the coast.
All of East Texas also lies within the Gulf Coastal Plain, but with less uniformity than the climate with rolling hills in the north and flat coastal plains in the south. Local vegetation also varies from north to south with the lower third consisting of the temperate grassland extending from South Texas to South Louisiana. The upper two-thirds of the region dominated by temperate forest known as the Piney Woods, which extends over 23,500 square miles (61,000 km²). The Piney Woods are part of a much larger region of pine-hardwood forest that extends into Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. The Piney Woods thins out as it nears the Gulf of Mexico.
The Sabine River and Trinity River are the major rivers in East Texas, but the Brazos River and Red River also flow through the region. The Brazos cuts through the southwest portion of the region while the Red River forms its northern border with Oklahoma and a portion of Arkansas. In East Texas and the rest of the South, small rivers and creeks collect into swamps called "Bayous" and merge with the surrounding forest. Bald cypress and Spanish moss are the dominate plants in bayous. The most famous of these bayous are Cypress Bayou and Buffalo Bayou. Cypress Bayou surrounds the Big, Little, and Black Cypress rivers around Jefferson. They flow east into Caddo Lake and the adjoing wetlands cover the rim and islands of the lake. Most of Buffalo Bayou was cleared to create the Houston Ship Channel, the remaining portions of Buffalo Bayou are in Downtown Houston.
Outside of the Greater Houston area the average population density is around 18–45 per mi² (7–12 per km²), with the population density near the Big Thicket dropping below 18 people per mi². East Texas's population is centered around Greater Houston and Beaumont/Port Arthur/Orange in Southeast Texas, Lufkin/Nacogdoches in Deep East Texas, and Tyler, Longview/Marshall, and Texarkana in Northeast Texas. At its western edge, East Texas overlaps with Central and North Texas; so cities like Bryan/College Station, Corsicana, and Greenville may be included in liberal definitions of East Texas. Only eight miles from the Texas border, Shreveport, Louisiana is considered the "Gateway of East Texas" and is the economic and cultural center for central East Texas, particularly the Longview/Marshall areas.
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[edit] Culture
Of all sections of the state, East Texas is the perhaps the most notable. The westernmost extension of the true Deep South, it very much fits the "moonlight and magnolias" image of Dixie. With its ante-bellum plantation homes, thick piney woods, and naturally growing magnolias, this region destroys the typical Hollywood 'western' image of Texas.
The Museum of East Texas was opened in Lufkin in 1976 under the name the Lufkin Historical and Creative Arts Center. [1]
[edit] References
- ^ Museum of East Texas. Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved on February 7, 2007.
[edit] Books
- Gone to Texas: Genealogical Abstracts from The Telegraph and Texas Register 1835-1841, compiled by Kevin Ladd
- The EAST TEXAS SUNDAY DRIVE Book, by Bob Bowman ISBN 1-878096-00-1
- Wild Flowers of the Big Thicket, East Texas, and Western Louisiana, by Geyata Ajilvsgi ISBN 0-89096-065-8
[edit] External links
- Additional Photographs and Information on East Texas
- East Texas from the Handbook of Texas Online
- East Texas Historical Association
- 1840 Map of East Texas From Texas Tides
[edit] See also
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