Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. states/mockups

The following is a mockup created to test out the images of the USA highlighting the state, and the state's close-up image with scalebar and capital. Created by Wapcaplet. Comments welcome.

 State nickname: Lone Star State  Other U.S. states Capital Austin Area - Total - Land - Water - % water Ranked 2nd 696,241 km² 678,907 km² 17,333 km² 2.5% Population - Total (2000) - Density Ranked 2nd 20,851,820 30/km² Admittance into Union - Order - Date 28th December 29, 1845 Time zone Central: UTC-6/-5 Mountain: UTC-7/-6 All but some part of western TX in Central Latitude Longitude 25&deg;50'N to 36&deg;30'N 93&deg;31'W to 106&deg;38'W Width Length Elevation -Highest -Mean -Lowest 1,065 km 1,270 km 2,667 meters 520 meters 0 meters ISO 3166-2: US-TX

Texas (old Spanish Tejas) is a state of the United States of America.

The state name derives from a Caddo word meaning friends or allies, and was mistakenly applied to the people and their location by Spanish explorers.

The state flower is the bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis); the state motto is "Friendship." The state nickname is The Lone Star State, after the single star on the state flag. The state tree is the pecan and the state bird is the mockingbird.

Texas (area 690,000 km2) is the second largest state in size after Alaska and has historically been portrayed as larger than life, especially in cowboy films and oil wells.

Location
Texas is bordered to the west by New Mexico, to the north by Oklahoma (across the Red River), and to the east by Louisiana (across the Sabine River) and Arkansas. To the south west Texas borders Mexico (across the Rio Grande), the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas. To the south east Texas has a shore of the Gulf of Mexico.

Texas is located in the south center of the United States. Depending on who you talk to (and which part of Texas they are from), Texas is part of the US South or the US Southwest. Texas shares some cultural elements with both regions, with more similarites to the South in the east of the state, and more similarities to the Southwest in the west.

History
Texas was part of the Spanish colony of New Spain; see Spanish Texas for details.

After Mexican independence in 1821 Texas was a part of Mexico. See Mexican Texas.

Also see Texas Revolution.

The Republic of Texas (1836-1845)
Texas was the first sovereign nation (other than aboriginal nations) to be annexed by the United States. (The other was the Kingdom of Hawaii.) The area now known as Texas was called The Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1845.

Important dates:

 * 1519. Alonso Alvarez de Pineda, a Spanish explorer, was probably the first European to map the Texas coast.
 * 1528 - 1534. Álvar Nuñez Cabeça de Vaca, another Spanish explorer, spent six years visiting Texas for trade.
 * 18 February 1685. Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de LaSalle established Fort St. Louis at Matagorda Bay, thus laying claim to Texas by France.
 * 1700 - 1799. Spain established Catholic missions in Texas throughout the 18th century.
 * 3 January 1823. Stephen F. Austin began a colony of 300 families in the Brazos River region. This group is now known as the "Old Three Hundred".
 * 26 June 1832. The Battle of Velasco resulted in the first casualties of the developing Texas Revolution.
 * 1832 - 1833. The "Conventions" of 1832 and 1833 were triggered by rising unrest at the policies of the ruling Mexican government. Among the policies that most irritated the Texians were the Mexican ban on slavery, the forcible disarmament of Texian settlers, and the expulsion of illegal immigrants from the United States of America. The example of the Centralista forces' suppression of dissidents in Zacatecas also inspired fear of the Mexican government.
 * Texas Revolution Early in 1835, Stephen F. Austin announced that war with Mexico was necessary to secure Texian freedom.
 * 2 October 1835. Texians fought a Mexican Cavalry detachment at the town of Gonzales, which began the actual revolution.
 * 28 October 1835. At the "Battle of Concepcion", 90 Texians defeated 450 Mexicans.
 * 2 March 1836. The "Convention of 1836" signed the Texas "Declaration of Independence", making an attempt at a clear break from Mexican rule.
 * 6 March 1836. Approximately 190 Texians, led by William B. Travis, were besieged at the Alamo in San Antonio by the Mexican army (numbering 4,000 to 5,000). The thirteen-day siege resulted in the deaths of all of its defenders, including Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and Travis.
 * 27 March 1836. By the order of Santa Anna, the Mexicans executed James Fannin and nearly 400 Texians in the Massacre at Goliad.
 * 21 April 1836. General Santa Anna, having defeated the Texas rebellion, while conducting mopping up operations advanced to San Jacinto in pursuit of the fleeing rebels. Led by Sam Houston, independence was won in one of the most decisive battles in history when Texians defeated Mexican forces of Santa Anna at the "Battle of San Jacinto". The entire Mexican force of 1,600 men was killed or captured by Houston's army of 800, with only nine fatal casualties. Santa Anna was among the captives.
 * 14 May 1836. The treaty of Velasco was signed by Republic of Texas Officials and General Santa Anna.
 * 1836. Five cities served as temporary capitals of Texas (Washington-on-the-Brazos, Galveston, Harrisburg, Velasco, and Columbia) before Sam Houston moved the capital to Houston in 1837.
 * 5 March 1842. A Mexican force of over 500 men, led by Rafael Vasquez, invaded Texas for the first time since the revolution. They soon headed back to the Rio Grande after briefly occupying San Antonio.
 * 11 September 1842. San Antonio was captured again by 1400 Mexican troops, led by Adrian Woll. They retreated, as before, but with prisoners this time.
 * 29 December 1845. President James K. Polk followed through on a campaign platform promising to annex Texas, and signed legislation making Texas the 28th state of the United States.
 * 1 February 1861. Following a 171 to 6 vote by the "Secession Convention", Texas seceded from the Union. Sam Houston was one of the voters who opposed secession.
 * 30 March 1870. The United States Congress readmitted Texas into the Union.
 * 20 January 2001. George W. Bush is inagurated. Born in New Haven, Connecticut he was raised in Midland, Texas.

Law and Government
Its capital is Austin, also known as the "Live Music Capital of the World." The Capitol is loosely modeled after the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, except that it is built of pink granite and its dome is topped by a statue of the "Goddess of Liberty", holding aloft a five-point Texas star. The capitol building is taller than the national capitol, but less massive.

See: List of Texas Governors

Geography
Texas has five major topographic regions: 1) The Coastal Plain, from the Gulf of Mexico inland to about San Antonio and just southeast of Austin. 2) The Balcones, a hilly rocky area in east central Texas. 3) The Great Plains region extends into northern Texas, inluding the Llano Estacado and the Panhandle high planes. 4) The North Central Plains. 5) The Trans Pecos Desert.

Texas is divided into 254 counties; See: List of Texas counties

Economy
Texas was lagely rural before World War II with cattle ranching, oil, and agriculture as its main industries. In 1926 San Antonio was the largest city in Texas with over 120,000 people.

After World War II, Texas has become increasingly industralized. Its economy (circa 2000) is largely based on information technology, with Dallas - Fort Worth Metroplex being the largest IT labor market in the United States, oil and natural gas, energy exploration and energy trading, agriculture, and manufacturing. Major cities include Houston, Brownsville, McAllen, Tyler, Odessa and Midland. Other important cities include El Paso, Eagle Pass, and Laredo; these are very important because of their location at the borderline with Mexico, making them important trade points.

The state passed New York in the 1990s to become the second largest state in population after California largely due to the availability of jobs, low cost of living, high living standard, lack of a state income tax, low taxation of business, limited government (the state legislature of Texas meets only once every two years), warm weather, and friendly people.

Demographics
As of 2000, the population of the state is 20,851,820.

Texas has a large number of Spanish speaking people some of whom have recently immigrated from Mexico, Central America, and South America but includes others, known as Tejanos, whose ancestors have lived in Texas since before independence from Mexico. Unlike other United States states which border Mexico, the culture of Texas gradually merges into that of Mexico producing a vibrant border region.

Texas has been largely fortunate in avoiding the racial and ethnic problems found in many southern states and large cities of the northeast. Much of this is because Texas's immigrant population and cultural connections with Mexico are considered to have a highly positive influence on the area's economy.

But Texas' diversity comes from more than its Hispanic residents. Frontier Texas was also settled by Germans, Poles, Swedes, Norwegians, Czechs, and French, and their influence can still be noted in the names of towns, styles of architecture, genres of music, and variety of foods.

Important Cities and Towns
See: List of cities in Texas

Well, I think it's better than the small map that is on the articles now, but the addition of these relatively large images makes the table somewhat cluttered. A simpler format for the table (or eliminating the table entirely) might reduce this problem; the state images could conceivably be made smaller, but 280 pixels in width was chosen as a good fit for the existing table size, and it'd be hard to make the maps much smaller without illegibility. There's certainly room for improvement. Comments? -- Wapcaplet 12:48 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * The table looks a little....um....long. Maybe you can have the maps moved out of the table and listed next to the geography section. --Jiang

True. I personally think the tables in these articles can be simplfied (and turned into more appropriate structures, such as lists; this is discussed on meta). I suppose most of what I'm interested in having comments on is the images themselves. A few things to note:


 * The red-on-white colors for the USA map were chosen to be consistent with the U.S. county articles (See discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject U.S. Counties/mockups). The primary goal of this map is to show the state's location within the U.S. (though Alaska and Hawaii don't really follow this rule, due to scale problems).
 * A yellow background, instead of white, is used for the state close-up. The primary goal for this image is to illustrate the geography and political boundaries of the state (whereas with the counties, the overriding goal was to show the location of the county).
 * The scale bar is auto-generated based on data tediously collected by me from the original state outline images. The subdivisions (red/white boxes) within the scale bars is kind of a hack, and I am not sure it is wholly appropriate (since it seems to be a carry-over from print media, where people can hold a ruler up to it and measure scale on the map; on the screen, it's mostly there to just give a sense of perspective.)

Other things I considered doing with the state close-up:


 * Showing time zone information (which would be irrelevant for many states, which only occupy one time zone, but could be important for larger states such as Texas which occupy more than one time zone)
 * Showing bodies of water, lakes, rivers, etc. This would necessitate a tremendous amount of extra work, since the original maps were the same outline maps used for counties, and do not show bodies of water.
 * Similarly, showing adjoining states
 * Showing location of other important cities

These things I deemed too complex; if someone would like to add them, that'd be great! But it seems like something that would be better handled when we get some proper Wikipediatlas software and markup.

-- Wapcaplet 14:05 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)