Texas is full of surprises. When I went off to college and met lots of people from other places for the first time in my life, I sometimes would—at the sound of a Busch Light beer can opening—happily launch into a soliloquy on Texas geography.

It’s not all like Dallas, that artificial city on the prairie, I would say. Texas has more than 90 mountains over a mile high*, a pine forest the size of New England, more inland waters than any state in the lower 48, and more than 3,000 miles of tidal coastline....