Say what you will about Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds’ The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, but consider this: I am hard-pressed to find any other movie that so perfectly mashes together so much of ...

You can’t go wrong with a classic cheese enchilada plate. Photo by Michael Amador. On the list of dishes Texans love to eat and argue about, cheese enchiladas exist somewhere near the top, perhaps ...

In the Spanish-tiled lobby of the Faust Hotel, a large portrait of a bearded man with a pronounced mustache, wearing 19th century military armor, hangs on the western wall. He’s holding a helmet in ...

If spring and summer encourage trips to the Gulf Coast, fall and winter facilitate a different sandy adventure: dune sledding. Since Texas isn’t known for mounds of fresh-fallen snow, its inland sand ...

The scent of sweet acacia charts a lazy course across the South Texas coastal plains, drifting like an unmoored skiff in the nearby bays. Commonly known as huisache, the shrubby tree emits a honeyed ...

Michael Robertson grew up singing church songs out of hymn books—classics like “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior” and “Lord, I Want to Be a Christian.” He attended Methodist and Baptist churches where ...

A Texas travel bucket list can cover a lot of ground, literally and figuratively. But one thing appears on them all: spring wildflower drives. As winter gives way to spring, wildflowers grace ...

Evel Zubiate sits inside a dually pickup truck, towing a hulking smoker. The smoker belongs to the Odessa High School Bronchos booster club and is painted a crisp red with white trim—the school’s ...

Two decades before his farm disappeared under the waters of the Toledo Bend Reservoir, A.A. McGraw was a young World War II sailor set to return to Texas. He had grown up in tiny Fairdale on the Texas ...

Here come the Herefords, charging past the pens at Pitchfork Ranch, a 165,000-acre slice of Southern Plains west of Guthrie along the South Wichita River. It’s December 1976, and these ruminants have ...

to thunder, its hard edges softened by distance. Through the mesh canopy of my tent, I peered north at the clouds strobing like paper lanterns above Punta de la Sierra. From where I lay, near the edge ...

In 1849, pioneering French botanist Auguste Trécul followed the Guadalupe River inland from the Gulf Coast to New Braunfels, noting flora and fauna along the way. Trécul was primarily interested in ...