American Quarter horse Headquarters in Amarillo is the world's largest equine registry.

Armand Bayou, located in Harris County contains the largest urban wildlife preserve in America.

Fossilized wing bones of Quetzalcoatlus northropii, a flying dinosaur from the Chihuahuan Desert, have a wing-spread of 38 to 40 feet and are the largest ones found anywhere on earth.

Franklin Mountains State Park, in El Paso County, is the largest urban park in the nation at over 24,049 acres, covering some 37 square miles, all within the city limits of El Paso.

Hidalgo Pumphouse Heritage and Discovery Center*s original steam engines, built in 1909, are the only ones of their kind in the country.

Mission San Francisco de la Espada*s Aqueduct in San Antonio was completed in 1745. It is the only functioning aqueduct remaining from the Spanish Colonial Period in the United States.

Of the state's 29 coastal and inland water ports, the Port of Houston is
the largest in size and handles more foreign cargo than any other port in the United States.

Padre Island is the longest undeveloped barrier island in the U.S.

Sabal Palm Grove Sanctuary in the Rio Grande Valley is a 527-acre wildlife sanctuary operated by the National Audubon Society that preserves the largest piece of the Texas Sabal Palm forest remaining in the United States.

Texas has the largest road system of any state; whether measured by 77,000 center line miles or by 184,000 lane miles.

Texas is the largest petroleum producing state in the US. If Texas was an independent nation, it would rank as the world*s fifth largest petroleum producing country.

Texas has the nation*s largest State Capitol building. The main building covers 2.25 acres of ground with 8.5 acres of floor space. A four-story, 650,000 square foot underground extension was added in 1993. The dome of the Capitol stands seven feet higher than that of the nation*s Capitol.

Texas has 181,000 farms, the most farms in the nation, as well as the most land in farms in the nation, with 130,900,000 acres.

Texas Wild-rice is an aquatic perennial grass found only in the San Marcos River in Central Texas.

Texas is the largest sheep raising state in the nation, with 1.7 million
head.

Texas has more counties (254) than any other state. Forty-one counties in Texas are each larger than the state of Rhode Island.

Texas is the nation's leading cattle producer with 14.8 million head.

The San Jacinto Monument near Houston is among the tallest columns in the world; at 570 feet, its about twenty feet higher than the Washington Monument in the District of Columbia.

The largest known mammal colony in the world is the colony of 20 million or more Mexican freetail bats in Bracken Bat Cave, located in Comal County.

The largest urban colony resides under the Congress Street Bridge in Austin.

The Texas Medical Center in Houston is the world's largest medical complex. More than 125,000 pass through it daily and it employs more than 51,000.

Three of the 10 largest cities in the US are in Texas (San Antonio, Dallas and Houston)

With 613 documented species of birds, birding in Texas exceeds all other states.

*World's Toughest Canoe Race,* from San Marcos in Central Texas to Seadrift on the Gulf of Mexico, covers 260 miles.