Texas is big but by some measures California is even bigger. This was the subject of a Featured Map a few years ago:
http://www.gcmap.com/featured/20180815 <http://www.gcmap.com/featured/20180815> How do the horrors of driving in Houston compare to those of driving in Los Angeles? I was surprised that Houston encompasses about 36% more land area than Los Angeles, though the LA metro sprawl is larger. Even San Antonio is bigger than LA, another surprise. -- Kal > On Aug 30, 2025, at 10:27 AM, Dan Reed via Mifnet <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Not a real sign (at least I don’t think it is), but the sign’s got it about > right…. assuming this sign is at/near the Texas/Louisiana border near > Shreveport. > > People think I’m joking when I tell them that the halfway point between my > home in Fort Worth and San Diego is El Paso (which is STILL in Texas, but a > very HARD 13 hour drive… btw… it’s almost as far from my house to Harlingen > down at the southern tip of the state)). But I’m not. The scale of Texas is > just hard for people who’ve never lived here to wrap their heads around. And > while the time from the TX/LA border to Houston is really only about 5 hours > or so, if you’re driving that way you really should “forget about it” ‘cause > the traffic and the scale of the extraordinarily crowded superfreeways in the > Houston area are, shall we say, “discouraging” to the Nth degree. This scale > is what made it possible for a little 3-plane intra-state airline called > Southwest to survive when it started up 51 years or so ago. If you’re a > business person on a tight schedule and a tight budget driving between Texas > cities can be a real time eater, a personal life-disrupter, and expensive if > you’ve gotta get a hotel overnight just to attend a 90-minute business > meeting. > > (Yes, the scale of Alaska is way, way bigger still… but so few people live up > there, and there simply are no cross-state highways there, so nobody ever > thinks about how long the theoretical driving distances up there would be). > > Dan Reed > Transplanted Texan >
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