County Map Project

TX - Texas

Learn more about Texas and see the county names at Yahoo's Texas page.

For three years ending in July, 1997, Pharr, Texas was our home. In this 1996 aerial photograph, our apartment building is shown in the northeast quadrant. It is the second in a series of six square buildings shown in a perfectly straight row. The area is developing rapidly; all of the empty fields to the north of that apartment are now full of homes and apartments.

It is located hard by Mexico, in the fantastic Rio Grande Valley - the Tropics of Texas. The Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC), founded in 1979, is a policy studies center dedicated to making the U.S. government and its citizens become more responsible partners in global and U.S.-Mexico border affairs. Its article on water issues is particularly important. The Valley is the seasonal home of almost 500 species of birds -- a majority of the bird biodiversity of the United States! Very specific measures taken in the RGV Wildlife Corridor are thus an important part of maintaining biodiversity at a national scale. The South Texas Nature site provides information for people planning to travel to the Valley in search of birds, butterflies, and beautiful places.

Rio Grande Valley Map

While we lived in McAllen, both Pam and I volunteered at the International Museum of Art and Science, then known as the McAllen International Museum. Pam was a docent, leading tours of the museums ever-changing variety of exhibits. I provided advice to the staff and consultants during the early stages of the museum's highly successful "A River Runs through Us" exhibit about the Rio Grande / Rio Bravo watershed.

In June 2001, Time magazine featured the border region in a special issue entitled Welcome to Amexica. Visit the interactive map and timeline created to accompany the issue, to learn more about the entire border region, including my previous home in the McAllen area.

Just as jazz is America's major contribution to world culture, South Texas has given the world Tejano music -- known best to outsiders because of the rise and tragic fall of Corpus Christi Tejano star Selena.
 
Nearby Hidalgo Texas was the first point of entry for Africanized "Killer Bees." In tribute, the town built the world's largest killer bee (to go along with many "world's largest" public artworks in Texas). Pam and Paloma are shown here with the bee on our 1999 visit. 

For more, see the Africanized Honey Bees report from the University of Georgia Entomologist Keith Delaplane or read about my own killer bee encounter in the Amazon. In Texas, our only encounter with Africanized bees occurred during a hike at the incredible Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. We heard the loud buzzing in the canopy overhead, and walked gingerly but quickly away. 

 Africanized Killer Bee

If you are ever driving across remote, West Texas Presidio County at night, you might see the famous Marfa Lights in the distance. We did so on a drive from Tucson to Pharr, and it was spooky, even though I do not subscribe to the paranormal explanations for the phenomenon. Such lights are also known as friar's lantern or foxfire.

I apparently have a long-lost cousin in San Antonio: Mark Bohanan even spells his last name the "right" way, though we do not know of any direct family connection. I found him because he has a restaurant called -- simply enough -- Bohanan's. It was not open when I lived in Texas, but I'm certainly going out of my way to dine there on my next visit. It has one of the finest restaurant web pages I have seen; I look forward to trying the food!

To learn more about the fascinating state of Texas, visit Texas Monthly.

So far, I have visited the counties shown in yellow.

I have been to 138 out of 253 counties in Texas.

For a very clear map with the county names, visit Delorme's Texas Counties page.

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