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West Texas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with the town named West, Texas.
For the album by Sleepercar, see West Texas (album).
West Texas
Region
West of Notrees
West of Notrees
West Texas counties in red; counties sometimes included in West Texas in pink
West Texas counties in red; counties sometimes included in West Texas in pink
CountryUnited States
StateTexas
Largest cityEl Paso

West Texas is a loosely defined region in the U.S. state of Texas, generally encompassing the arid and semiarid lands west of a line drawn between the cities of Wichita Falls, Abilene, and Del Rio.

No consensus exists on the boundary between East Texas and West Texas.[1] While most Texans understand these terms, no boundaries are officially recognized and any two people are likely to describe the boundaries of these regions differently. The historian and geographer Walter Prescott Webb has suggested that the 98th meridian separates East and West Texas;[2] writer A.C. Greene proposed that West Texas extends west of the Brazos River.[3] Use of a single line, though, seems to preclude the use of other separators, such as an area—Central Texas. Texas is part of the American South and the American Southwest at the same time, while the semiarid and desert climates of West Texas are clearly characteristic of the American Southwest.

West Texas is often subdivided according to distinct physiographic features. The portion of West Texas that lies west of the Pecos River is often called "Far West Texas" or the "Trans-Pecos", a term introduced in 1887 by geologist Robert T. Hill.[4] The Trans-Pecos lies within the Chihuahuan Desert and is the aridest part of the state. Another part of West Texas is the Llano Estacado, a vast region of high, level plains extending into Eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle. East of the Llano Estacado lies the “redbed country” of the Rolling Plains, and south of the Llano Estacado lies the Edwards Plateau. The Rolling Plains and Edwards Plateau subregions act as transitional zones between eastern and western Texas.

Climate

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West Texas receives much less rainfall than the rest of Texas and has an arid or semiarid climate, requiring most of its scant agriculture to depend heavily on irrigation.[5] Northern portions of the area are irrigated with water from underground sources, such as the Ogallala Aquifer. Irrigation withdrawal, and water taken out farther north for the needs of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico, have reduced the Rio Grande to a stream in some places, even dry at times.

Parts of West Texas have rugged terrain, including many small mountain ranges, while most parts of the state are closer to sea level. The northern parts of West Texas and the higher elevations of the mountain ranges of the Trans-Pecos region are prone to occasional heavy snowfall during winter, whereas snow is less common in other areas of West Texas.

Counties

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The 72 counties of West Texas are Andrews, Bailey, Borden, Brewster, Brown, Callahan, Castro, Cochran, Coke, Coleman, Comanche, Concho, Crane, Crockett, Crosby, Culberson, Dawson, Deaf Smith, Dickens, Eastland, Ector, El Paso, Fisher, Floyd, Gaines, Garza, Glasscock, Hale, Haskell, Hockley, Howard, Hudspeth, Irion, Jeff Davis, Jones, Kent, Kimble, King, Knox, Lamb, Loving, Lubbock, Lynn, Martin, Mason, McCulloch, Menard, Midland, Mitchell, Motley, Nolan, Pecos, Presidio, Reagan, Reeves, Runnels, Schleicher, Scurry, Shackelford, Stephens, Sterling, Stonewall, Sutton, Taylor, Terrell, Terry, Throckmorton, Tom Green, Upton, Ward, Winkler, and Yoakum.[6]

Major cities

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Rank Image City County(ies) Population
(2023 Estimate)[7]
Region State
1 6 El Paso El Paso 678,958
2 10 Lubbock Lubbock 266,878
3 25 Midland Midland, Martin 138,397
4 29 Abilene Taylor, Jones 129,043
5 34 Odessa Ector, Midland 115,743
6 43 San Angelo Tom Green 99,262
7 95 Socorro El Paso 38,238
8 133 Horizon City El Paso 24,168
9 140 Big Spring Howard 22,373
10 155 Plainview Hale 19,420

Smaller West Texas cities and towns include Alpine, Andrews, Anthony, Brownfield, Canutillo, Coyanosa, Crane, Fabens, Fort Davis, Fort Stockton, Hale Center, Horizon City, Iraan, Kermit, Lamesa, Levelland, Littlefield, Marathon, Marfa, McCamey, Mertzon, Monahans, Ozona, Pecos, Post, Rankin, Ransom Canyon, San Elizario, Seminole, Slaton, Snyder, Sweetwater, and Van Horn.

Economy

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Major industries include livestock, petroleum and natural gas production, textiles such as cotton, grain, and because of very large military installations such as Fort Bliss, the defense industry. West Texas has become notable for its numerous wind turbines producing clean and alternative electricity.

As of 2018, the West Texan economy was in a prosperous economic period, which has been described as the "West Texas oil boom".[8][9]

Sports

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While there are no major league teams in the West Texas region, sports fans are faithful to their local high school and college teams. NCAA Division I college teams include the Texas Tech Red Raiders, and the UTEP Miners. NCAA Division II teams include the West Texas A&M Buffaloes, the Texas–Permian Basin Falcons, and the Lubbock Christian Chaparrals and Lady Chaps.

El Paso hosts the El Paso Chihuahuas, a AAA baseball team, and the El Paso Locomotive FC which plays in the USL Championship, the second tier of the American soccer pyramid. The Midland RockHounds and Amarillo Sod Poodles represent the region in double-A baseball. Junior hockey is also present in the region, with the Odessa Jackalopes of the Tier II North American Hockey League.

Politics

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2020 U.S. presidential election in Texas results by county

Except for the Trans-Pecos region, West Texas has become well known as a stronghold for conservative politics. Some of the most heavily Republican counties in the United States are in the region. Former U.S. President George W. Bush spent most of his childhood in West Texas.[10]

The region includes much of the Permian Basin, the highest producing oil field in the United States.[11] This likely inclines the region to support the Republican Party over the Democratic Party, as the latter supports environmentalism and action on climate change.[12][13]

Several counties in the Midland-Odessa area were some of the first parts of Texas to abandon the state's "Solid South" Democratic roots; two counties[a] have not supported a Democrat for president since 1948. The Rolling Plains to the east remained Democratic substantially longer: although Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign lost Texas by 27.50%, he won three counties in this region.[b] Since 2000, this region swung very rapidly toward the Republican Party due to its population's intransigent opposition to the liberal social policies of the Democratic Party,[14] and by 2016, it had nearly the same Cook PVI as the Panhandle.

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Further information: West of the Pecos
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
West Texas.

"West of the Pecos" has become a metaphor for the universe of Westerns. "Fastest draw west of the Pecos" and similar superlatives are a cliche, and the title character of Chisum observed "There’s no law west of Dodge, and no God west of the Pecos”.

Cormac McCarthy's novel No Country for Old Men and its subsequent film adaptation take place in West Texas, and much of the movie was filmed there.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Cochran, M., Lumpkin, J. and Heflin, R. 1999. West Texas: a portrait of its people and their raw and wondrous land. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 176 pp.
  2. ^ Webb, W.P. 1935. The Texas Rangers: a century of frontier defense. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 583 pp.
  3. ^ Greene, A.C. 1998. Sketches from the five states of Texas. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 176 pp.
  4. ^ Hill, R.T. 1887. The topography and geology of the Cross Timbers and surrounding regions in Northern Texas. The American Journal of Science, 3rd Series, 33:291–303.
  5. ^ Bubenik, Travis (2018-04-15). "Texas Could Look Increasingly Like West Texas, Climate Study Says". Houston Public Media. Retrieved 2020-10-20.
  6. ^ "The Regions of Texas". Texas Counties.net. Retrieved 13 October 2014.
  7. ^ "Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for Incorporated Places in Texas: April 1, 2020 to July 1, 2023 (SUB-IP-EST2023-POP-48)" (XLSX). United States Census Bureau, Population Division. May 16, 2024. Retrieved May 23, 2024.
  8. ^ Clifford, Krauss (March 28, 2018). "$9.5 Billion Purchase by Concho Is Latest Sign of West Texas Oil Boom". The New York Times. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  9. ^ Saphir, Ann (May 1, 2018). "Boom in West Texas oil patch lifts wages, prices". Reuters. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  10. ^ "Republican victories show Texas is still far from turning blue". The Texas Tribune. November 9, 2022. As large as the cities are and how Democratic that they are, Texas Democrats still don't have a way to get past that red wall of rural West Texas, [Drew Landry] said. Rural Texas still rules the day. I was seeing some very, very close numbers before a lot of the rural counties reported [election returns], and once they did, it just blew the door open for Abbott.
  11. ^ US Department of Energy (November 2018). "Permian Basin Geology Review" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on February 26, 2021.
  12. ^ Tabuchi, Hiroko (October 16, 2019). "Despite Their Promises, Giant Energy Companies Burn Away Vast Amounts of Natural Gas". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on June 5, 2021. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
  13. ^ Storrow, Benjamin (5 May 2020). "Methane Leaks Erase Some of the Climate Benefits of Natural Gas". Scientific American. Archived from the original on 27 April 2022.
  14. ^ Cohn, Nate; 'Demographic Shift: Southern Whites' Loyalty to G.O.P. Nearing That of Blacks to Democrats', New York Times, April 24, 2014

Notes

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  1. ^ West Texas counties voting Republican at every election since 1952 comprise Ector County, Midland County.
  2. ^ West Texas Plains "Bible Belt" counties voting for Mondale in 1984 were Dickens County, Fisher County, and Stonewall County.
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