Texas Reference Libraries
The Edwards Plateau is an area of west-central Texas which is bordered by the Balcones Fault towards the south and the east, the Llano Uplift and the Llano Estacado towards the north, and the Chihuahuan Desert and Pecos River towards the west. San Angelo, San Antonia, Del Rio, and Austin make a rough outline of the area. The eastern part of the plateau is the Texas Hill Country. The trees of...
The Texas Blackland Prairies are a temperate grassland ecoregion that is located in Texas that stretches roughly from the Red River in North Texas to San Antonio in the south. This area covers an area of 19,400 square miles, consisting of a main belt of 17,000 square miles and two islands of tall grass prairie grasslands located southeast of the main blackland prairie belt; both the main...
Guadalupe Mountains National Park is located in in western Texas in an area of the Guadalupe Mountains. The park contains 86,367 acres of land that once was home to hunter-gather Native Americans. The first Spanish explorers arrived in the area in the 16th century, but these groups did not stay long. They introduced horses into the area, which greatly benefited the nomadic Apache tribe that...
Big Bend National Park is located in the United States in the state of Texas. This park was first established in 1933 as a Texas State Park known as Texas Canyons State Park, but was later renamed Big Bend State Park. The park attained National status in 1935 when the U.S. Congress passed legislature to acquire the park. The park was completed and opened in 1944. The history of human...
David Walker was a United States Navy officer and a NASA astronaut. He was born David Mathieson Walker on May 20, 1944 in Columbus, Georgia and graduated from Eustis High School in Eustis, Florida in 1962. He then went on to attend the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland and received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1966. Upon graduation, he went through flight training in...
Charles Lacy Veach served as a United States Air Force fighter pilot for over 14 years before being selected as a NASA Astronaut in 1984. Veach served as an astronaut until his passing from cancer on October 3, 1995 in Houston, Texas. “Lacy” Veach was born in Chicago, Illinois and with his family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall E. Veach, still reside in...
William Fisher is American physician and a former NASA Astronaut. He was born William Frederick Fisher on April 1, 1946, in Dallas, Texas. He graduated from North Syracuse Central High School in North Syracuse, New York in 1964. He continued on to attend Standford University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences in 1968. The following two years, Fisher worked on graduate...
Coues' rice rat (Oryzomys couesi) is a semiaquatic rat that can be found in southern Texas, throughout Mexico and Central America, and into the northwestern portion of Colombia. It prefers a habitat with abundant water, but it is able to live in arid habitats and shrub lands. Coues’ rice rat forms the group O. couesi, along with six other species of rat. All of these rats are in the Oryzomys...
The white-throated woodrat (Neotoma albigula) can be found in a range that extends from Central Mexico in the South to Colorado and Utah in the North. Its western range extends from Texas to southeastern California, but it does not occur in the eastern areas of the United States. Populations of these rats occurring east of the Rio Grande in New Mexico and Trans-Pecos Texas are classified as...
The American hog-nosed skunk (Conepatus leuconotus), also known as the rooter skunk, is native to North and Central America. This species’ large range includes much of Mexico, and Texas and Colorado in the United States. In its range, it prefers a habitat within rocky terrain, streambeds, and canyons, and in Mexico, it occurs in many areas including mountains, tropical areas, and thorn...
