November 30, 2018 | By Matt Joyce
There was a time when going home for the holidays meant taking the train. Whether boarding a steam locomotive or the electric interurban, passengers who could afford a ticket enjoyed unheard-of advantages in speed and comfort over horse-drawn coaches and the earliest automobiles.
November 30, 2018 | By Chet Garner
Known for being stuck between a rock and a weird place (Round Rock and Austin), Pflugerville may seem like just another suburb. But hidden among the urban sprawl is a small town full of budding entrepreneurs working to make this pfunnily named community a deluxe daytripper destination.
November 29, 2018 | By Clayton Maxwell
If you swing by Rosa’s Cantina on the western edge of El Paso, mere minutes from “the badlands of New Mexico,” you will not find Feleena, the girl who drove a lovesick cowboy to his doom in Marty Robbins’ famous ballad “El Paso.” But you will find friendly locals sitting at the bar with ice-cold Tecates. You will also find Robbins memorabilia adorning the walls—1970s album covers with the mustachioed musician in a denim shirt, for example, and a framed copy of the lyrics of “El Paso.”
November 29, 2018 | By Cynthia J. Drake
Texans didn’t invent the fruitcake, but in our state’s tradition of braggadocio, we made it better (and bigger, in some cases).
A holiday delicacy with a sometimes stodgy reputation—thanks in part to Johnny Carson’s long-running gags in the 1970s and ’80s—fruitcakes were imported to Texas in the 1800s by German immigrants who packed their original family recipes and brought them to their new home. Though the recipes stayed basically the same, the fruitcake benefited from one crucial Lone Star ingredient: fresh pecans.
November 29, 2018 | By Wes Ferguson
Remember Goliad? It’s one of the oldest towns in Texas, originating in 1749 as a Spanish colonial mission and presidio where the San Antonio River flows through gently rolling coastal plains a little more than 45 miles inland from San Antonio Bay.
November 29, 2018 | By Kelly Stocker
Delia Lubin, the namesake of this holiday season staple, started her tamale empire—which includes six restaurants, a food truck, and a mail-order business—with just 5 pounds of masa and the need to provide for her young family.
November 28, 2018 | By Michael Hoinski
Penny the Chihuahua greets visitors with an inspection sniff outside the elevator leading to Bunkhouse, the Austin-based hospitality company owned by Odessa native Liz Lambert.
November 28, 2018 | By
Austin had a population of about 115,000 when photographer Neal Douglass took this picture of Congress Avenue looking north to the Texas State Capitol on New Year’s Day 1947. The streetscape has changed over the past 71 years, and Austin has grown 10-fold to about 1 million people. But the electric Paramount Theatre sign, which was replaced in 2015, and the State Capitol building, which was completed in 1888, still anchor the storied strip.
November 28, 2018 | By Emily Roberts Stone, Executive Editor
On my son’s third birthday last year, he received a gift we’ll probably never top: snow in Austin. The 4-inch snowfall provided enough white powder for all the winter fun he’d only seen in cartoons or picture books until then. For two magical hours, he ran around our yard making snowballs and snow angels and catching snowflakes on his tongue. Nearly a year later, he still brings it up on a regular basis—the night so cemented in his mind, I’m betting it’ll be one of his first recallable memories. The toys and clothes he got for gifts that year, not so much.
November 28, 2018 | By
Scarlet possumhaw berries and the bright plumage of the male northern cardinal add a splash of warmth to an otherwise cold winter day. While possumhaw is found in Central and East Texas—sprouting berries in fall and winter—northern cardinals can be spotted year-round through most of Texas. Like this iconic winter bird, other songbirds, gamebirds, opossums, and raccoons all dine on the possumhaw’s conspicuous berries.
November 28, 2018 | By Matt Joyce
Explore the adobe streets of this colonial Spanish presidio town with artist and history buff Al Borrego. As he guides walking tours of San Elizario, Al Borrego paints a vivid picture of the town’s 400 years of borderland adventure and enterprise.
On Main Street, Borrego describes the day in 1598 when explorer Juan de Oñate marched through with an expedition of 500 colonists. Outside the immaculate San Elizario presidio chapel, Borrego explains how the community was actually south of the Rio Grande until an 1829 flood realigned the river.
November 24, 2018 | By Heather Brand
People who visit the coast during the summer may think there’s no surf in Texas, but that’s because they haven’t seen the waves of winter.
In late January through mid-February, storm-driven northerlies blow across the Gulf of Mexico, roiling the placid surf into choppy waves that can build to heights of 5 feet and taller. Offshore winds then polish these waves to produce smooth, jade-colored swells that build then break, curling in a clean line, row after row. For those willing to brave the chill, there are plenty of destinations along the 367 miles of the Texas coast to give off-season surfing a try.
“Most people are fair-weather surfers,” says James Fulbright, proprietor of Strictly Hardcore Surf Specialties in Galveston. “There are 70 percent fewer surfers in the water in winter.”
Published 10 times per year by the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Highways, the official travel magazine of Texas, encourages travel to and within the Lone Star State and tells the Texas story to readers around the world.
