"ONE SOMETIMES WONDERS," wrote Larry McMurtry after driving through the southern parts of Houston toward the coast, "if [Texas heroes] Bowie and Travis and the rest would have fought so hard for this land if they had known how many ugly motels and shopping centers would eventually stand on it."

I think they would have.

Texas's early-19th-century settlers and their latter-day counterparts committed to seeding the landscape with "ugly motels and shopping centers" share an urge to colonize; to conquer and make productive use of a seemingly untamed land. The successes of Texas's earlier colonization in the name of independence clearly made possible its later colonization in the name of profit. Both gained a mythic element in their ability to claim the legacy of the cowboy: the independent master of the terrain.