I had a conversation w/ somebody the other day and we got into where West Texas Ends and Central Texas starts.

Geographically... San Angelo is the closest decent size town to the center (in between Eden and Brady)... but it's considered West Texas.

Abilene is considered West Texas but I moreso think of it as the Panhandle.

Interestingly, Texas P&W calls San Angelo, Abilene, and Brownwood Panhandle



But here calls Ozona and Sonora Hill Country???




If I'm calling by the traditional scope of the land... West Texas starts at about 30 miles west of San Angelo around Sterling City or Mertzon. The vegetation gets pretty deserty around right there.


The Panhandle would start about right north of I-20 around Big Spring and Snyder.

To me that leaves SA and Abilene in this weird spot where they have a bit of the elements of all 3 neighboring regions very near by. You can travel about 1 hour from each location and be in the desert of West Texas, the plains of the Panhandle, or the rolling hills of Central Texas.

I'll probably call it West Texas till I die... but just curious of your opinions

[This message has been edited by c-jags (edited 6/9/2009 8:38a).]

San angelo definintely West Texas...to dang hot and dry and all rivers/lakes are muddy due to farmland...i would say you do a little parabola with Ballinger being the vortex....because growing up there we were right on the line of where the difference was between a ton of rain and not much...it always seemed to really blow up at the runnels/coleman count line

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The old man who used to live across the street from me said anything east of Stanton was east Texas.

A.C. Greene in his book A Personal Country says......

quote:

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My West Texas is bounded by my experience, and is not so wide as it is deep.

The capital W of West Texas reflects not just a direction but a set of mind, a frame of outlook and expectation.

West Texas has nothing in common with Dallas, although Dallas lies not to many miles east of where West Texas begins. On the other hand, West Texas shares even less with El Paso....So much of West Texas is an attitude brought on by the country and its natural forces, tempered by its history.

---

He then goes on to say, if you were to mark it off on a map, he'd say from the Brazos in the east over to the Pecos in the west up to the caprock and over to the Red River in the north with a southern boundary of a line around Brady and San Saba or so.

He points out this as being the Texas Frontier of the 1800's. Sparsely populated if at all for generations, fought over for decades, more cattle and ranching than farming, fewer rivers and trees, more rolling prairies.

I'd say he's pretty much on point.

I'd much rather point to him as an authority than anything drawn up by a department bureaucrat in Austin.

When I was a kid and we would take trips to Big Bend, I always considered anything west of Langtry to be West Texas. This was probably because of Judge Roy Bean and all his antics.

That will always be where I draw the imaginary line in my head, and I don't think there is anything I can do about it either.

I always get a chuckle out of folks who consider Stephenville and that area to be West Texas.

That ain't West Texas.

I agree Stephenville isn't West Texas having grown up there, But also having lived in Shackelford County just and hour or so away that definately is West Texas so I would say the line is somewhere in between.

Shackelford County is absolutely West Texas. Cattle, oil, big deer, big ranches, mesquite trees, Ft. Griffin - that's West Texas.

This is topic on which I could wax philosophical for hours on end, something that I don't have time to do right now. I have pondered at some point writing a paper on what exactly defines "West Texas" and its people (e.g. culture, climate, geography) and what is and what isn't West Texas. The rambling cliff's notes of my thoughts are as follows:

Fort Worth is the gateway to West Texas, but Fort Worth proper is not West Texas. You start seeing signs of what is West Texas once you cross the Brazos on 180 west of Fort Worth, but you're probably not fully into West Texas until you hit Breckenridge or thereabouts. North of there, I'm not sure where to draw the line. I don't think Wichita Falls is West Texas, but Seymour, Vernon, etc. probably are. Going south, like someone said you can't include Stephenville and that area (it's too green).

Everything west of there and north of the Hill Country proper is probably West Texas. A.C. Greene didn't see the Caprock as "his" West Texas, but more often than not I see the entirety of the South Plains included in West Texas and I wouldn't disagree. Amarillo and north is hard - the people and area have plenty of similarities with West Texas, but the land probably has more in common with Oklahoma, Kansas, southeast Colorado, etc. than with, say, San Angelo and Abilene, but if it's not in West Texas, what is it? You can't just have an isolated area up there that's not part of anything. I tend to lump Amarillo in just because I don't really know what to do with it. One you get beyond the Pecos it becomes "Far West Texas" (a subset of West Texas just like the Big Country, Concho Valley, etc.) but it's West Texas one and the same.

Roscoe to the East, Lamesa to the North, Del Rio to the South and El Paso to the West.

It all depends on where you are from. To me, West Texas starts at the Pecos and is everything to the west of it. Big counties and mountains define West Texas.

Other than that you have the pan handle, the valley, and east Texas. Just one person's point of view.

I believe Zane Gray said the west begins at the 100th parallel(sp). That runs about 15 miles east of Angleo and 3 miles east of Wall.

Draw the line from there!

Angelo, definitely West Texas.

I always equate San Angelo with "West Texas" because it was part of the old "Little SWC" district that was always what everyone thought about when referring to "West Texas Football". Lubbock, on the other hand, was more "Panhandle" because it was grouped with the Amarillo schools. Thus, I also equate all surrounding little school towns as "West Texas", so Clyde, Merkel, Albany, Baird, Cisco, Hawley, Stanton, Robert Lee, etc. are "West Texas", but New Deal, Slaton, Tahoka and Brownfield are not so much.

I don't think you can go any further East than Breckenridge, much further North than Throckmorton (although Munday and Knox City are pretty "West Texas" ) or further South than Highway 67, and still be in "West Texas". That leaves out Dublin, Gorman, De Leon, which may make my map bogus.

[This message has been edited by HtownAg92 (edited 6/11/2009 2:33p).]

Food for thought - From where I live in Clint Tx,everything else is east Texas.

I consider everything west of Abilene as West Texas...use 83 and 277 as the line.

[This message has been edited by State of Texas (edited 6/12/2009 9:02a).]

My mind's boundaries:

Draw a line North/South through Abilene and Junction. To the west of that is West Texas.

Just south of Lubbock is the northern-most boundary.

In my mind there is no real South boundry, except the Rio.

As you go from the East to the West the trees shrink until you get to Abilene/Junction, then they start to spread out. That is the criteria.

fuzzy fan gave a good description of west texas.

Generally speaking, I think if you drew from Sweetwater down to Del Rio (including San Angelo) and south of Lubbock.

I kind of include the panhandle in West Texas, but it's also it's own distint area. I'd say it starts somewhere between Fort Worth and Abilene, probably closer to Fort Worth.

quote:

---

I believe Zane Gray said the west begins at the 100th parallel(sp). That runs about 15 miles east of Angleo and 3 miles east of Wall.

Draw the line from there!

Angelo, definitely West Texas.

---

Wow, I was going to say on a local level that San Angelo is West Texas, but Eden is Hill Country and somewhere in that 40 odd miles is the line...

To me, it has a lot to do with topography. You aren't in West Texas if you're in the Post Oaks. Anywhere where the great buffalo herds roamed on open prarie (before the Mesquite and cedar invasion) is what I consider West Texas.

I believe that San Angelo people consider themselves "West Texas". Del Rio people consider themselves "West Texas" but consider Eagle Pass as "South Texas". I've never made a distinction between "Panhandle" and "West Texas" - It's all west Texas to me.

West of 277, South of I-20.

I always considered the old 915 area code to be a pretty good delineation.

quote:

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consider everything west of Abilene as West Texas...use 83 and 277 as the line.

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This, and the old 915 area code.

i used to live in Abilene and didn't really consider it west texas. But go a little bit west and it sure it. So I always though Abilene was about the start of west texas.

When I lived in El Paso(my home) we use to call Odessa--East Texas. After all it was 300 miles or so east of El Paso.

Not sure if the folks in Odessa would take kindly to being called East Texans.

"Never forget who we are or where we come from, never forget the Aggie Code of Honor and never forget Duty, Honor, Country." President Gates

I'd call El Paso North Mexico. South of Lubbock, East of the Pecos, West of Abilene and San Angelo, North of Del Rio is what I'd call West Texas.

Although technically it's as west as you can get I don't think of El Paso as West Texas either. For me West Texas has to have an agrarian or oil patch feel that El Paso lacks. That said I think the old 915 area code is the best decription I've heard.

[This message has been edited by dead zip 01 (edited 9/3/2009 10:42a).]

I lived in El Paso for 1 year....it is not West Texas. The Northern Mexico description is apt.

My mother (from Alpine) always said with a certain grin, "You have to be born west of the pecos to be from West Texas."

She would later say she got dirty looks from old ladies when she would say that in San Angelo.

so how's abilene?

...oops, wrong thread.

Does powerbiscuit need some education?

http://www.texags.com/main/forum.reply.asp?topic_id=1559588&forum_id=16

lol

what is it?