The old WPA Guide to Texas says that “no other route across Texas offers such differences in topography, produce, climate, and people” as does US-83, which is still very true today. Starting at the Oklahoma border on the southern edge of the Great Plains, your route winds along the foot of the Cap Rock escarpment, then opens out onto the cattle country of Edwards Plateau where numerous river canyons provide respite from the mesquite scrubland, and finally ends up some 900 miles later at the Gulf of Mexico. Besides diverse landscapes, US-83 also passes through a virtual survey of Texas history: the prehistoric pictographs of Paint Rock; Mexican-American battlegrounds along the Rio Grande; 100-year-old frontier towns built of red brick around their central courthouses; and the modern Gulf Coast resort of South Padre Island. As you’ll soon learn if you’re perusing other Texas travel literature, this section of the state is, for the most part, ignored. Thus, you’re definitely among an elite company, traveling along truly unbeaten paths.
