History UsefulNotes / OtherCitiesInTexas

UsefulNotes/{{Texas}} is a ''big'' state. No, seriously, [[EverythingIsBigInTexas it's really big]], so big that the city of El Paso is closer to UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, [[UsefulNotes/{{California}} CA]], ''three states away'', than it is to Shreveport, LA, which is right on the Texas border in the other direction. We're talking a state that is larger than several European nations on its own. [[https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/how-big-is-texas-compared-to-other-land-masses/ Seriously.]] So big, in fact, that it has several cities with very large populations, none of which are within 50 miles (80 km) of each other, some of which get mentioned in fiction.

Another smaller city, located almost a hundred miles north-west of the UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex, and definitely more of a "passing-through" town. Home to "The World's Smallest Skyscraper", (the result of a technicality/loophole on the blueprints for the building) and the Hotter'N Hell Hundred, a world-famous 100-mile bicycling race and ride[[note]]The event includes several professional races, one of them 100 miles, but the vast majority of participants are involved in one of several non-competitive rides, the longest of which is 100 miles.[[/note]] taking place in the middle of the summer, when temperatures sit at above 100 degrees Fahrenheit ''daily''. Wichita Falls is also the childhood home of Mia Hamm (who attended Notre Dame Catholic Academy, a fact the school would never shut up about until their closure in mid-2021), the music band Music/BowlingForSoup, Phil [=McGraw=] (a.k.a. Series/DrPhil), wrestler Wrestling/KeithLee, and World Series-winning [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball Boston Red Sox pitcher]] Ryan Brazier. Wichita Falls is home to Midwestern State University (a member of the Texas Tech family of schools), an extension of a college from a neighboring city (Vernon College), and one of three Air Force bases in Texas (this being Sheppard, the others being Lackland in San Antonio and Dyess in Abilene) that all aspiring pilots are required to attend. Sometimes included with the Metroplex, despite not technically being included according to the feds and being so far away.

At the turn of UsefulNotes/TheNewTens, Wichita Falls gained a reputation of being a WeirdnessMagnet. During the 2011-2015 drought, Wichita Falls became known as the town that recycled toilet water, thanks to Creator/JimmyFallon sharing it on [[Series/TheTonightShowStarringJimmyFallon his late show.]] A few years later, the town became known nationally once again for a woman attempting to hide wine in a Pringles can, and after that, the town made national headlines again for the arrest of a man who wanted to bomb an Amazon data center so that he would disable "70% of the internet"[[note]]Yes, we know it doesn't work like that, but that was the culprit's actual purpose[[/note]].

-->''Music/MartyRobbins'', "El Paso"

However, El Paso's unique character, history, and location have led to it becoming more regularly featured in recent years. In sports, it's Wrestling/EddieGuerrero's hometown and also home to the University of Texas at El Paso, most famous for being home to the 1966 NCAA basketball championship team (back when the school was Texas Western College). They were a little known team famous for defeating the all-white Kentucky with the first all-black staring line up in NCAA history. This "Cinderella story" was famously depicted in the film ''Film/GloryRoad'' and made them the first (and for several years only) college men's team to ever be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.[[note]]Three other pioneering college teams, two women's and one men's, later had series of teams inducted as units. The first was [[Film/TheMightyMacs Immaculata]], out of Philadelphia's Main Line suburbs, whose early-1970s women's teams got in. The two most recent, both entering in 2019, include one Texas school. Wayland Baptist, from the Panhandle town of Plainview, saw its 1948–82 women's teams get in, alongside the 1957–59 men's teams from Tennessee A&I (now Tennessee State), a historically black school out of UsefulNotes/{{Nashville}}.[[/note]] In fiction, the Jaime Reyes version of the ComicBook/BlueBeetle is based here, a rarity for Creator/DCComics (who tend to base their superheroes in fictional cities). The R&B artist Music/{{Khalid}} spent much of his youth in the city and regularly mentions it in his music. Noted animator Creator/DonBluth also hails from El Paso. Music/MartyRobbins' 1959 smash "El Paso" became his {{invoked|Trope}} SignatureSong.

Also notable for the [[UsefulNotes/NationalBasketballAssociation San Antonio Spurs]], who generally put up a good team year in and year out, and for the [[UsefulNotes/GroupOfFiveConferneces University of Texas at San Antonio]]--a relatively young school in the Texan landscape. San Antonio is also known for being the home of Wrestling/ShawnMichaels, Creator/MichelleRodriguez, [[Music/DyingFetus Kevin Talley]], Creator/SummerGlau, Creator/JaredPadalecki, Creator/ShaquilleONeal (in high school), and WebVideo/MarzGurl, and if you count people conceived in San Antonio, Music/MarilynManson.

The capital of Texas. Home of the University of Texas (or "texas university" to the Aggies of Texas A&M, who refuse to even capitalize it), which is the state's largest in terms of enrollment, as well as a traditional powerhouse in all of the Big Three sports (American football, basketball, baseball; although nationally it's most known for the former).

Two cities adjoining one another, located around 100 miles from both Houston and Austin. Bryan was historically larger, but College Station caught up just before the turn of the current century and is now noticeably larger. College Station is home to Texas A&M University, the Aggies, and the George Bush Presidential Library[[note]][[UsefulNotes/GeorgeHWBush Papa Bush]], not "Dubya".[[/note]], which has a statue of horses leaping over a real chunk of the Berlin Wall, depicting the fall of the wall when Bush was President.

The largest city in the Texas Panhandle, and also the largest city in an extremely flat, barren stretch of land called the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llano_Estacado Llano Estacado]], or 'Palisade Plains'. It is the birthplace of Music/BuddyHolly, a fact you are likely to be reminded of often if you visit. Home to Texas Tech University. Also home to a very large prairie dog town. As this entry might hint, it's memetically a bit sleepy.

Also notable for the San Antonio Spurs, who generally put up a good team year in and year out, and for being the home of Wrestling/ShawnMichaels, Creator/MichelleRodriguez, [[Music/DyingFetus Kevin Talley]], Creator/SummerGlau, Creator/JaredPadalecki, Creator/ShaquilleONeal (in high school), and WebVideo/MarzGurl, and if you count people conceived in San Antonio, Music/MarilynManson.

Today, UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's "ranch", formerly known as the "Western White House", is located a couple dozen miles outside the city. Creator/SteveMartin is from here; and Baylor University, established in 1845, has claimed the title of being the oldest continuously operating university in the state of Texas.[[note]]Baylor's had a rough history, too, most recently with a sex scandal.[[/note]] The HGTV series ''Series/FixerUpper'' is based here as well; Chip and Joanna Gaines' Magnolia Market is a popular tourist destination.

Nearby Luckenbach (population 3), which was once also a rural German settlement, is notable today as a tiny (but popular) CountryMusic venue. {{Outlaw country|Music}} singer Jerry Jeff Walker's live album ''¡Viva Terlingua!'' was recorded here, and the town got a very famous ShoutOut in the popular 1977 Music/WaylonJennings song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)."[[note]]Funnily enough, neither Jennings nor the song's writers had ever been to Luckenbach, although Jennings eventually played a concert there twenty years later in 1997.[[/note]] It consists of a general store selling souvenirs, the dance hall, and not much else, but is a nice little destination for country fans and native Texans alike.

The smaller counterpart to New Braunfels (see below), Fredericksburg shares much of the of the Texas German (or Texasdeutsch) heritage as its larger counterpart, as reflected in the town's architecture (and name), and is also just as active in the trendy San Antonio/Austin tourist scene. UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz is from here, as is a museum about the Pacific War that bears his name. It serves as a gateway to the Hill Country wine scene, and hosts several wineries within the city limits itself.[[note]]Fun fact: open containers of wine or beer are legal to walk around with in Fredericksburg, provided you stick to the Main Street shopping district.[[/note]] And be sure to visit during the early-to-mid summer, when Fredericksburg's famous peaches are in season.

Also the home of Schlitterbahn, a world-famous water park that consistently gets rated as the Number One water park in the world, alongside its sister park Schlitterbahn Beach in South Padre Island.

Also notable for the San Antonio Spurs, who generally put up a good team year in and year out, and for being the home of Wrestling/ShawnMichaels, Creator/MichelleRodriguez, [[Music/DyingFetus Kevin Talley]], Creator/SummerGlau, Creator/ShaquilleONeal (in high school), and WebVideo/MarzGurl, and if you count people conceived in San Antonio, Music/MarilynManson.

UsefulNotes/{{Texas}} is a ''big'' state. No, seriously, [[EverythingIsBigInTexas it's really big]], so big that the city of El Paso is closer to UsefulNotes/LosAngeles, [[UsefulNotes/{{California}} CA]], ''three states away'' than it is to Shreveport, LA, which is right on the Texas border in the other direction. We're talking a state that is larger than several European nations on its own. [[https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/how-big-is-texas-compared-to-other-land-masses/ Seriously.]] So big, in fact, that it has several cities with very large populations, none of which are within 50 miles (80 km) of each other, some of which get mentioned in fiction.

It is well known for [[QuirkyTown all kinds of colorful characters]]. For instance, the late Leslie Cochran, who had become something of a beloved city mascot toward the end of his life. While many cities have flamboyant transvestites who run for mayor from a public shelter, in few cities do said individuals have a well-reasoned campaign platform[[note]]Typically he focused local business and culture, LGBT rights, and the rights of the homeless, for those interested[[/note]], have a fully staffed volunteer campaign team with a respectable budget, participate seriously in public debates, and receive a small but noteworthy percentage of the city's votes in several mayoral campaigns.

Texas's second-largest single city as of the 2010 Census (passing Dallas) and the seventh-largest in the US with 1.5 million people calling it home (though the metropolitan area is quite a bit further down the list). It's billed as Texas's premier tourist destination; there's Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Sea World, the Riverwalk, several Spanish missions, New Braunfels just up the road, and of course, [[RememberTheAlamo the Alamo]].[[note]]What surprises most tourists about the Alamo usually winds up being either the fact that it's right in the middle of downtown -- seriously, it's right across from a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum, a wax museum, and a Häagen-Dazs, and it's literally possible to walk out of the Riverwalk area and accidentally stumble across it -- or that the shrine (the proper name for the Alamo itself; the Alamo is used officially to refer to the compound with several other buildings inside of it) is a lot smaller than most people would imagine. [[Film/PeeweesBigAdventure It also has no basement.]][[/note]]

Oh, and [[Creator/RoosterTeeth those guys behind]] ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'', ''WebAnimation/{{RWBY}}'', Creator/AchievementHunter and whatnot are here, too.

The city is known as the "Live Music Capital of the World". Describing its live music scene as "massive" would be an understatement: it's possible to walk around several blocks downtown (particularly its historic Sixth Street) on any given night and find at least four bands/artists of four different genres playing in four different clubs at the same time--on weekend evenings, it's hard to find a restaurant, pub, bar, or club that ''doesn't'' have some sort of live performance going on. As previously mentioned, Austin is a place where the mainstream and underground mix, and the music scene is no exception. A number of bars have become especially known as places for huge name acts to get back to their roots--it isn't unheard of for groups like {{Music/Coldplay}}, Music/ZZTop, or Music/{{The Rolling Stones|Band}} to drop into a Sixth Street bar for a one night performance with little to no fanfare. The Austin music scene spans several genres, from country to blues to electronica to indie rock. Some of the best known acts to hail from the city include The 13th Floor Elevators, Music/DanielJohnston, Music/{{Spoon}}, Music/ExplosionsInTheSky, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gary Clark Jr., and Townes Van Zandt.

Despite this, Abilene loves its frontier roots, and prides itself on its educational merits. It's also very active in the energy industry; it's very close with the petroleum industry, and is not far from a plateau of wind turbines to its immediate south that is based out of nearby Sweetwater.

The city is known as the "Live Music Capital of the World". Describing its live music scene as "massive" would be an understatement: it's possible to walk around several blocks downtown (particularly its historic Sixth Street) on any given night and find at least four bands/artists of four different genres playing in four different clubs at the same time--on weekend evenings, it's hard to find a restaurant, pub, bar, or club that ''doesn't'' have some sort of live performance going on. As previously mentioned, Austin is a place where the mainstream and underground mix, and the music scene is no exception. A number of bars have become especially known as places for huge name acts to get back to their roots--it isn't unheard of for groups like {{Music/Coldplay}}, Music/ZZTop, or Music/TheRollingStones to drop into a Sixth Street bar for a one night performance with little to no fanfare. The Austin music scene spans several genres, from country to blues to electronica to indie rock. Some of the best known acts to hail from the city include The 13th Floor Elevators, Music/DanielJohnston, Music/{{Spoon}}, Music/ExplosionsInTheSky, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Gary Clark Jr., and Townes Van Zandt.

Texas is a ''big'' state. No, seriously, [[EverythingIsBigInTexas it's really big]], so big that the city of El Paso is closer to Los Angeles, CA, ''three states away'' than it is to Shreveport, LA, which is right on the Texas border in the other direction. We're talking a state that is larger than several European nations on its own. [[https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/how-big-is-texas-compared-to-other-land-masses/ Seriously.]] So big, in fact, that it has several cities with very large populations, none of which are within 50 miles (80 km) of each other, some of which get mentioned in fiction.

Coastal city located about two hours south of San Antonio. A major port and growing tourist attraction, with a subtropic climate that shares more with that of Florida than what most normally associate with Texas. Notable for its significant Mexican-American population and for being the hometown of slain Tejano singer {{Music/Selena}}. Home to a branch campus of the aforementioned Texas A&M.

However, El Paso's unique character, history, and location have led to it becoming more regularly featured in recent years. In sports, it's Wrestling/EddieGuerrero's hometown and also home to the University of Texas at El Paso, most famous for being home to the 1966 NCAA basketball championship team (back when the school was Texas Western College). They were a little known team famous for defeating the all-white Kentucky with the first all-black staring line up in NCAA history. This "Cinderella story" was famously depicted in the film ''Film/GloryRoad'' and made them the first (and for several years only) college men's team to ever be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.[[note]]Three other pioneering college teams, two women's and one men's, later had series of teams inducted as units. The first was [[Film/TheMightyMacs Immaculata]], out of Philadelphia's Main Line suburbs, whose early-1970s women's teams got in. The two most recent, both entering in 2019, include one Texas school. Wayland Baptist, from the Panhandle town of Plainview, saw its 1948–82 women's teams get in, alongside the 1957–59 men's teams from Tennessee A&I (now Tennessee State), a historically black school out of Nashville.[[/note]] In fiction, the Jaime Reyes version of the ComicBook/BlueBeetle is based here, a rarity for Creator/DCComics (who tend to base their superheroes in fictional cities). The R&B artist Music/{{Khalid}} spent much of his youth in the city and regularly mentions it in his music. Noted animator Creator/DonBluth also hails from El Paso. Music/MartyRobbins' 1959 smash "El Paso" became his {{invoked|Trope}} SignatureSong.

Famous border town across the Rio Grande from [[WretchedHive the drug-war-torn city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas]]. The southern terminus of Interstate 35, which runs all the way to Duluth, Minnesota. Also one of the three southern termini of Interstate 69, which will eventually run to Port Huron, Michigan. A major hub of transportation and shipping.

Nearby Luckenbach (population 3), which was once also a rural German settlement, is notable today as a tiny (but popular) CountryMusic venue. Outlaw country singer Jerry Jeff Walker's live album ''¡Viva Terlingua!'' was recorded here, and the town got a very famous ShoutOut in the popular 1977 Music/WaylonJennings song "Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)."[[note]]Funnily enough, neither Jennings nor the song's writers had ever been to Luckenbach, although Jennings eventually played a concert there twenty years later in 1997.[[/note]] It consists of a general store selling souvenirs, the dance hall, and not much else, but is a nice little destination for country fans and native Texans alike.

-> Just let me know if you wanna go
-> to that home out on the range.
--> ''La Grange'', '''Music/ZZTop'''

A small city located roughly halfway between Dallas and Austin on I-35 in the middle of the "Texas Triangle" between [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Dallas]], UsefulNotes/{{Houston}}, and Austin/San Antonio, this town has had... a rough history, to say the least. In 1916, a black man named Jesse Washington was accused of raping and murdering a white woman, tried and convicted in a [[KangarooCourt trial that lasted all of one hour]], and was subsequently ''hung, castrated, and burned alive for two hours'' in front of the Town Hall. People took pictures and sold pieces of his charred corpse as souvenirs during and immediately after his death; the public images outraged most of the United States. In 1953, Waco was destroyed by the eleventh-deadliest tornado in US history (with a death toll of 114[[note]]tied with the tornado that hit another Texas town, Goliad, in 1902[[/note]]), which stalled its economic growth while cities of similar size like Austin boomed. Forty years later, it was doomed to have its name forever associated with the name of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, a group of disfellowshipped members of disfellowshipped members of the Seventh-Day Adventists (long story) who got into an armed standoff with the ATF and FBI at their compound right outside the city at Mount Carmel[[note]]The compound and the Branch Davidians still exist to this day, however finding it is rather hard, as there aren't clear markings/signs around the city to locate it, it's difficult to identify thanks to a series of fires destroying some of the remaining compound buildings in the late '90s, and for obvious reasons, the surviving Davidians aren't fond of outsiders poking around the area.[[/note]], making the word "Waco" a rallying cry for {{Right Wing Militia Fanatic}}s for years; the raid was noted as being the reason why Oklahoma City bomber Timothy [=McVeigh=] would plot his attack on the Murrah Building (intentionally carried out on the second anniversary of the siege). Poor town. UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's "ranch", formerly known as the "Western White House", is located a couple dozen miles outside the city. On the positive side, Creator/SteveMartin's from here, and Baylor University, established in 1845, has claimed the title of being the oldest continuously operating university in the state of Texas. (They've had a rough history, too, most recently with a sex scandal.) The HGTV series ''Series/FixerUpper'' is based here as well.

Texas's second-largest single city as of the 2010 Census (passing Dallas) and the seventh-largest in the US with 1.5 million people calling it home (though the metropolitan area is quite a bit further down the list). It's billed as Texas's premier tourist destination--there's Six Flags Fiesta Texas, Sea World, the Riverwalk, several Spanish missions, New Braunfels just up the road, and of course, [[RememberTheAlamo the Alamo]][[note]]What surprises most tourists about the Alamo usually winds up being either the fact that it's right in the middle of downtown - seriously, it's right across from a Ripley's Believe It or Not museum, a wax museum, and a Häagen-Dazs, and it's literally possible to walk out of the Riverwalk Mall and accidentally stumble across it - or that the shrine (the proper name for the Alamo itself; the Alamo is used officially to refer to the compound with several other buildings inside of it) is a lot smaller than most people would imagine. [[Film/PeeweesBigAdventure It also has no basement.]][[/note]].

Historically speaking, there's still quite a bit of Mexican influence in the town. San Antonio also has a huge military presence - at one point it was the home of four Air Force bases (Lackland and Randolph are still active, Brooks has been closed and Kelly was absorbed into Lackland) and an army post (Fort Sam Houston). If you were in the Air Force and not an officer, you very likely started out at Lackland. Also notable for the San Antonio Spurs, who generally put up a good team year in and year out, and for being the home of Wrestling/ShawnMichaels, Creator/MichelleRodriguez, [[Music/DyingFetus Kevin Talley]], Creator/SummerGlau, Creator/ShaquilleONeal (in high school) and if you count people conceived in San Antonio, Music/MarilynManson. The city is located about eighty miles (roughly an hour and a half driving time depending on traffic) southwest of Austin, meaning that the two cities are sometimes conflated together. Between San Antonio's tourist spots and Austin's, well, [[BuffySpeak Austin-ness]], the two cities serve as a hub for those visiting the state.

Another smaller city, located almost a hundred miles north-west of the UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex, and definitely more of a "passing-through" town. Home to "The World's Smallest Skyscraper", (the result of a technicality/loophole on the blueprints for the building) and the Hotter'N Hell Hundred, a world-famous 100-mile bicycling race and ride[[note]]The event includes several professional races, one of them 100 miles, but the vast majority of participants are involved in one of several non-competitive rides, the longest of which is 100 miles.[[/note]] taking place in the middle of the summer, when temperatures sit at above 100 degrees Fahrenheit ''daily''. Wichita Falls is also the childhood home of Mia Hamm (who attended Notre Dame Catholic Academy, a fact the school would never shut up about until their closure in mid-2021), the music band Music/BowlingForSoup, Phil [=McGraw=] (aka Series/DoctorPhil), wrestler Wrestling/KeithLee, and World Series-winning [[UsefulNotes/MajorLeagueBaseball Boston Red Sox pitcher]] Ryan Brazier. Wichita Falls is home to Midwestern State University (a member of the Texas Tech family of schools), an extension of a college from a neighboring city (Vernon College), and one of three Air Force bases in Texas (this being Sheppard, the others being Lackland in San Antonio and Dyess in Abilene) that all aspiring pilots are required to attend. Sometimes included with the Metroplex, despite not technically being included according to the feds and being so far away.

Named for a town in Kansas that it has surpassed in population, Abilene is a mid-sized city in the west-central portion of the state. Though somewhat similar to San Angelo (see below), inasmuch as they're both mid-sized college towns with an Air Force base within 90 miles of each other (not far by Texas standards), Abilene is the city equivalent of AlwaysSomeoneBetter -- the population is a little bigger, the city has more universities (three to San Angelo's one), they have a zoo, and they have many chain stores and restaurants that San Angelo lacks.[[note]]In San Angelo, people joked for ''years'' that you had to drive to Abilene to eat at the Olive Garden, until San Angelo finally got its own Olive Garden in 2006. Today, the joke still applies for pretty much everything else.[[/note]] This growth is due largely to the fact that Abilene is located right on Interstate 20, which connects directly to the [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex DFW Metroplex]] to the east, whereas San Angelo is on its own without an interstate connection. Naturally, this has led to a bit of a friendly rivalry between the two cities, most frequently on display come high school football season.[[note]]It also played out in college football for quite some time. Abilene Christian University and Angelo State University both were part of the Lone Star Conference for the longest time in Division II ball and had quite the rivalry between them, until ACU moved up to D-I in 2013.[[/note]]

Combined with Austin's rich creativity-friendly culture, this has led to it becoming especially known as a hotspot for VideoGameCompanies: historically, it has been the home of Creator/OriginSystems, one half of Creator/IonStorm (the other half was in [[UsefulNotes/DFWMetroplex Dallas]]), and a branch of Creator/LookingGlassStudios (coincidentally, Creator/WarrenSpector had worked at all three). Nowadays, Creator/RetroStudios (known for the ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' and ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountryReturns'' series) and Creator/DevolverDigital are based in the city, while a number of other AAA game developers, including Creator/ArkaneStudios, Creator/BioWare, Creator/BlizzardEntertainment, and Creator/ElectronicArts, have branches in Austin that either currently employ or have employed a bunch of Origin, Ion Storm, and Looking Glass veterans.