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BTW, my county used to be the largest county in the country. I'm in San Antonio and Bexar County went all the way up where Colorado is! Guess it shows how few people lived in Texas!
Shortly after, it was all subdivided and by the time of the Civil War, the counties were almost like they were now
Between 1836 and 1850, I have no idea exactly what happened.
Texas started out small in 1836.
Another, probably easier to comprehend..says disputed territory
It must have somehow acquired land from New Mexico and a small part of land from California. Maybe it was easy land grab??
It became a state in 1845 and the border was moved further south after the Mexican-American War.
Although Texas was a slave state that produced cotton, I don't think it was as cheap to ship from Texas as it was to ship it from New Orleans.
Cotton moved west after the civil war, but it had to do with land parcels and machinery. Today AZ, NW, and West Texas (not East Texas) lead the nation in cotton production. The western states production is a 20th Century thing. I don't think they even grow cotton in East Texas anymore.
I read an article about cotton production a few months ago. Pima Cotton is an Arizona cotton.
https://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US18-01.html
also wore out their soil and would pull up stakes and move to undeveloped land farther west, using slave labor of course to make this possible.
Your cotton map illustrates that, before modern irrigation made farming in the arid west possible, just about mid Texas was where annual rainfall finally became too low for agriculture.
Didn't know that about Pima cotton, but that reminds me that coffee experts have reportedly found a variety of wild coffee that can be grown with less water and tastes as good as Arabica. (!) Guessing climate change will have me switching to tea before it's widely available, though.
... it was about this time in Texas history. It takes place about 10 years after Texas lost the Civil War and they still hadn't reconciled to the loss. A lot of lawless "rebel" soldiers ran around the countryside causing trouble because they couldn't accept that the North had won.
Tom Hanks' character had been a commander in the Confederate army, but once the war was lost he swore allegiance to the Union so he was OK. There was still a lot of racism and hatred towards native Americans, but somehow European immigrants were tolerated and welcomed.
I quite enjoyed that movie, and marveled that it was shot in Australia because modern-day Texas is way too built up. Also that was how Tom Hanks and his wife were infected with Covid, it happened in Australia last year.
to generate your own electricity and stay off the grid. If it's as windy as you say, you'd have no problem running an entire hacienda with a single generator, and probably not one that's too elaborate. 
Can we give it to Texas? They can take our governor too. 
1764...I'm pretty sure West Florida eventually went to Mississippi and Alabama, so that those states could have ports.
You know the whole Alamo fight and all? Yeah, that one.
The historic spin was that Santa Ana had taken over Mexico and assumed a dictatorship, and Texas rebelled for "freedom." Remember that old yarn? Yeah, that doesn't tell the whole story. The fact is that most of the immigrants that came to Texas were from the South and of course had slaves to run their farms/ranches. Mexico under Santa Ana looked like it would abolish slavery and Texans weren't really down with that development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_Texas
The issue of slavery became a source of contention between the Anglo-American settlers and Spanish governors. The governors feared the growth in the Anglo-American population in Texas, and for various reasons, by the early 19th century, they and their superiors in Mexico City disapproved of expanding slavery. In 1829 the Guerrero decree conditionally abolished slavery throughout Mexican territories. It was a decision that increased tensions with slave-holders among the Anglo-Americans.
After the Texas Revolution ended in 1836, the Constitution of the Republic of Texas made slavery legal. Sam Houston made illegal importation from Mexico a crime in 1836. The General Provisions of the Constitution forbade any slave owner from freeing his slaves without the consent of Congress and forbade Congress from making any law that restricted the slave trade or emancipated slaves.
