Texas

 

It’s a whole ‘nother place.

 

Of course before it was this place, it was Mexico.  In the 1830s the people of Texas declared independence from Mexico, not as part of the United States, but as their own republic.  The rest of the west hadn’t formed into states yet and Texas was bigger then than it is now, encompassing parts of what are now Oklahoma, Kansas, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.  Wyoming!  Texas went all the way to Wyoming!  The new republic had plans that included expansion all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

 

The separation from Mexico didn’t go smoothly though.  The new Texans and Mexico didn’t agree on what the border should be.  Mexico thought the border was the Nueces River which flows through what is now Corpus Christi.  Texas thought the border was the Rio Grande which flows through what is now Brownsville.  After nine years on their own Texas joined as a state with the United States, bolstering their border defense capabilities.  Eventually, as a result of the Mexican American War, the United States ended up “buying” the land in dispute in the 1840s, and everyone agreed on the Rio Grande as the border.  (Of course the Rio Grande continues to complicate the issue by periodically flooding, then settling back down into a channel it wasn’t in before, thus altering the border.)