East Texas
- 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 cultural and geographic area in the U.S. state of Texas. There are various ways to define East Texas, but the least subjective is that it the area of Texas that is part of the Southeastern United States ecologically. More subjective is the cultural definition; East Texas has been described as the most culturally Southern area of Texas—although this can be offensive to other Texans who consider themselves Southerners—or that the region is not really part of Texas—which offends East Texans. Simply put, East Texas is the region of Texas that looks and feels more like Louisiana and Mississippi than it does South and West 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.
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.
A popular definition defines East Texas as the region between Interstate 45 linking Dallas and Houston and the Louisiana Border.
Geography
Climate is the unifying factor in the region's geography—all of the 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. 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' 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.
Culture
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Much of the rural parts of East Texas are characterized by expansive cattle ranches, cotton plantations, and oil fields. There is a general sense of pride amongst the small communities in the region for these economic activities. These industries facilitate tracts of scenic countryside — open grassy land stretching to the horizon, broken only by sparse structures.
Culturally East Texas is more closely akin to Arkansas, Louisiana, and even Mississippi than it is to West Texas. East Texas is in the Bible Belt creating a strong Fundamentalist Christian sentiment. Sizable Jewish communities have also thrived in Houston, Galveston and Marshall since the late 19th century. Though more than 35% of Texas' urban and rural population is now Hispanic, this group is far less numerous in East Texas, where African Americans are still the most populous minority. Hispanics, however, have come to outnumber African Americans two to one in the city of Houston, which may or may not be included as part of the traditional East Texas. During the Civil Rights Movement, several communities clashed over integration.
The Museum of East Texas was opened in Lufkin in 1976 under the name the Lufkin Historical and Creative Arts Center.
References
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 1878096001
- Wild Flowers of the Big Thicket, East Texas, and Western Louisiana, by Geyata Ajilvsgi ISBN 0890960658
External links
- Additional Photographs and Information on East Texas
- East Texas from the Handbook of Texas Online
- East Texas Historical Association
