Texas

IV

The People of Texas

The total population of Texas has increased greatly over the years. In 1900 there were only 3,048,710 persons in the entire state. In 2000 the population was 20,851,820, an increase of 22.8 percent over ten years earlier. The state ranks second among the states in population, after California. The average population density is 35 persons per sq km (90 per sq mi).

The first Texans were Native Americans, but there remains only one small reservation in the state, in Polk County, where members of the Alabama and Coushatta peoples still live. The French and Spanish were the first Europeans to reach Texas, but few of them settled in this land; most were explorers, missionaries, soldiers, or traders. Indeed, most of the people who live in Texas are descendants of people who came from other parts of the United States or from Mexico. The largest number of Mexicans and Mexican Americans live in southern Texas, especially along the Río Grande and in such cities as San Antonio and Corpus Christi. Many of them still speak Spanish in their homes and read the Spanish-language newspapers published in several southern Texas cities. Many families emigrated from Germany and other parts of central Europe to central Texas in the middle of the 19th century. The names of some of the towns in central Texas, such as New Braunfels, Fredericksburg, and Schulenburg, reflect their German origin.

In 2000 whites constituted 71 percent of the population, blacks 11.5 percent, Asians 2.7 percent, Native Americans 0.6 percent, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders 0.1 percent, and those of mixed heritage or not reporting race 14.2 percent. Hispanics, who may be of any race, were 32 percent of the people.

A

Population Patterns

The first towns in Texas grew up along rivers and near springs, where there was plentiful water. There was little early settlement on the dry plains of western Texas. Later, with the coming of the railroads, new towns sprang up along the railroad routes. Still later a new generation of towns was built or expanded in the parts of Texas where large oil fields were discovered.

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In 1910 more than three-quarters of the population lived on farms or in rural communities of less than 2,500 people. By 1970 only one-fifth of the people lived on farms or in small towns, a proportion that has remained fairly stable. In 2000 urban areas were home to 83 percent of the state’s population. This shift to larger cities was due to two factors. Farming was mechanized and industries in the cities grew very rapidly, thus providing employment for rural dwellers leaving the farms.

B

Principal Cities

The Gulf Coast section of the Coastal Plain is dominated by a belt of seaport cities, almost all of which are large oil and natural-gas centers.

Houston, with a population of 2,016,582 in 2005, is the dominant city on the coast. It is a shipping point for goods produced throughout the Southwest and has the central administrative offices of many oil, gas, and pipeline companies. Beaumont, with 111,799 people, and Port Arthur, with 56,684, are twin seaport cities in southeastern Texas. Galveston, with 57,466 people, and Texas City, with 44,274, are seaports on Galveston Bay south of Houston. Galveston is located on an island, and its long beaches on the Gulf side of the island make it a popular summer resort. Texas City leans more toward manufacturing. Corpus Christi, with 283,474 people, is the major city in the southern part of the Gulf Coast section.

The Black Prairies, stretching down the northwestern edge of the Coastal Plain, originally constituted Texas’s richest cotton-farming country. The farm population has declined there, but the cities have grown. Dallas, with 1,213,825 people in 2005, for example, is at the center of one of the fastest growing regions of the country. Just west of Dallas, between Dallas and Fort Worth, is Arlington, with a population of 362,805. Arlington is an industrial and tourist center.

San Antonio, with 1,256,509 people in 2005, was first settled by Spaniards. It became the capital of their Texas territory during the late 18th and 19th centuries. Later its growth was spurred by the development of the surrounding rich Black Prairies farming area. Austin has a population of 690,252 and is the capital city of Texas. Waco, with 120,465 people, is a transportation and distribution center.

Fort Worth, with 624,067 people in 2005, is the major metropolitan center of the Central Lowland. Although Fort Worth and Dallas are only 50 km (30 mi) apart, Dallas tends to face east in its business interests and Fort Worth is more concerned with the farmlands, ranchlands, and oil fields to the west. Wichita Falls, with 99,846 people, is another large city in the Central Lowland. Its rapid growth has been spurred by the discovery of large petroleum deposits nearby.

The Basin and Range province is largely unpopulated. Great expanses of land are too mountainous and dry to support human habitation. Some scenic parts of this country are held in state and national parks, yet there are also important ranchlands there. El Paso, with 598,590 people in 2005, is the major city in the Basin and Range province.

The eastern Texas section of the Coastal Plain, or that portion of the Coastal Plain lying inland from the Gulf Coast and east of the Black Prairies, was one of the first parts of the state to be settled by farmers from states to the east. It was a cotton-growing region, and after the abolition of slavery many of the cotton lands were farmed by black and white tenant farmers, operating largely as sharecroppers. In 1930, in some of the counties of eastern Texas, as many as 60 percent of the farmers were tenants. It is in this part of Texas that the farm population has declined the most. Farm tenancy has also dropped sharply. Some counties have lost as much as half their population since the 1930s.

The southern Texas section of the Coastal Plain is much more thinly populated than the Gulf Coast section. There are no seaports, except at the mouth of the Río Grande, and not many large towns. Generally this land is ranching country. There are only two sizable concentrations of population, the city of Laredo and a cluster of cities near the mouth of the Río Grande. Laredo, with a 2005 population of 208,754, is located on the Mexican border. Through the city is funneled a great deal of traffic and trade between Mexico and the United States. Brownsville, with 167,493 people, is the largest of a belt of cities that dominates the Río Grande Valley from the Gulf Coast to a point 100 km (60 mi) inland.

The High Plains section of the Great Plains extends over most of the Texas Panhandle. The population has increased considerably as ranching has given way to crop farming. More important, several towns and cities have grown very rapidly as agricultural or petroleum and natural gas centers. Amarillo, with 183,021 people in 2005, has been replaced by Lubbock, with 209,737 people, as the largest city of the High Plains. Lubbock has grown rapidly with the development of irrigated cotton farming in the surrounding area.

The Edwards Plateau, the rough southern part of the Texas Great Plains, is thinly populated. Some people in the rugged Hill Country support themselves through tourism. San Angelo, with 88,014 people, is the only city of substantial size on the plateau.

C

Religion

About one-third of those participating in religion in Texas are Baptists, while about one-quarter are Roman Catholics. The Methodists, Pentecostals, and Lutherans also have membership of significant size.

V

Education and Cultural Institutions

Although the president of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, urged the Texas congress to establish public schools in 1838, public education was little developed until the annexation of Texas to the United States. Private schools, known as Cornfield schools, provided teachers who rotated among the plantations and communities during the 1840s and 1850s.

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