A Patriotic Family Road Trip in Texas

The Alamo

San Antonio, TX

"Remember the Alamo." 1836. 13 days. 200 defenders against thousands.

San Jacinto Monument

La Porte, TX

A 567-foot obelisk marking the battlefield where Texas won her independence in 18 minutes.

Sabine Pass Battleground State Historic Site

Sabine Pass, TX

The earthworks where 47 Confederate gunners turned back a Union invasion fleet in 1863.

Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park

Brownsville, TX

The prairie where the first battle of the Mexican-American War was fought in May 1846.

Texas State Capitol

Austin, TX

The largest state capitol building in the country. Pink granite, intentionally taller than the U.S. Capitol.

LBJ Ranch

Stonewall, TX

The "Texas White House" in the Hill Country, home and ranch of the 36th president.

George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

Dallas, TX

The 43rd president's papers, a full-scale Oval Office, and a twisted steel beam from the World Trade Center.

George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum

College Station, TX

The 41st president's library on the Texas A&M campus, with his Avenger torpedo bomber hanging inside.

LBJ Presidential Library

Austin, TX

Forty-five million pages of the Johnson years, plus the Great Society and Vietnam told side by side.

LBJ Boyhood Home

Johnson City, TX

The house where Lyndon Johnson grew up from 1913, part of Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park.

Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site

Denison, TX

The modest frame house where Dwight D. Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, the only president born in Texas besides Lyndon Johnson.

USS Lexington Museum

Corpus Christi, TX

A WWII aircraft carrier turned floating museum on the Gulf Coast in Corpus Christi.

Battleship TEXAS

La Porte, TX

The last surviving dreadnought, and the only battleship that fought in both world wars.

Fort Davis National Historic Site

Fort Davis, TX

One of the best-preserved frontier forts in the Southwest, garrisoned by Buffalo Soldiers.

Fort Concho National Historic Landmark

San Angelo, TX

Twenty-three original and restored buildings of a frontier fort founded in 1867.

National Medal of Honor Museum

Arlington, TX

Opened in 2025, the museum tells the stories of the more than 3,500 recipients of the nation's highest award for valor.

Vintage Flying Museum

Fort Worth, TX

A museum at Meacham Airport devoted to restoring and flying World War II aircraft, including the B-17 "Chuckie."

Buffalo Soldiers National Museum

Houston, TX

A museum of African American military service, named for the Black regiments that served on the frontier after the Civil War.

Lone Star Flight Museum

Houston, TX

A flying aviation museum at Ellington Airport, home of the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame.

Fort Sam Houston Quadrangle

San Antonio, TX

An 1876 Army supply depot with a clock tower, where Geronimo and his band were held in 1886 on their way east.

Texas Military Forces Museum

Austin, TX

A museum at Camp Mabry covering the Texas Army and Air National Guard from the Texas Revolution forward.

Audie Murphy American Cotton Museum

Greenville, TX

A museum of Hunt County's cotton economy and of native son Audie Murphy, the Medal of Honor recipient who became one of the most decorated soldiers of World War II.

Cadillac Ranch

Amarillo, TX

Ten Cadillacs buried nose-down in a Texas Panhandle field. Bring spray paint.

The Big Texan Steak Ranch

Amarillo, TX

The 72-ounce steak, free if you finish it and the sides in an hour, since 1960.

Sam Houston Statue

Huntsville, TX

A 67-foot white statue of Sam Houston, visible from Interstate 45 for six miles.

Texarkana Post Office and Federal Building

Texarkana, TX

The only federal building in the country that straddles a state line, half Texas and half Arkansas.

Pioneer Plaza

Dallas, TX

A downtown park with a bronze sculpture of a cattle drive, three trail riders pushing a herd of longhorns down a bluff.

San Antonio River Walk

San Antonio, TX

A walkway along the river through downtown, built by the Works Progress Administration from 1939 to 1941.

Gruene Historic District

New Braunfels, TX

A German settlers' cotton town whose Gruene Hall, built in 1878, is billed as Texas's oldest continually operating dance hall.

Treaty Oak

Austin, TX

A live oak estimated at about 500 years old, the last of the fourteen Council Oaks, which survived a deliberate poisoning in 1989.

Austin Moonlight Towers

Austin, TX

Iron towers raised in 1894–95 to light the city from 165 feet up, and Austin is the only city still using them.

Landa Park and Comal Springs

New Braunfels, TX

A city park at Comal Springs, the largest springs in Texas and the Southwest, feeding the short Comal River through town.

Schlitterbahn New Braunfels

New Braunfels, TX

The original Schlitterbahn, opened in August 1979 on the Comal River with four slides on a tower patterned after a German castle.

Natural Bridge Caverns

San Antonio, TX

The largest commercial caverns in Texas, discovered by four college students in 1960 and named for the 60-foot limestone bridge at the entrance.

Southfork Ranch

Parker, TX

The ranch house made famous as the Ewing family home in the television series Dallas.

Fort Worth Stockyards National Historic District

Fort Worth, TX

The brick pens and packing houses where the Chisholm Trail cattle drives ended, still working as a stockyard.

Presidio La Bahia

Goliad, TX

The restored Spanish fort where Colonel Fannin's men were held and then executed in 1836.

Palo Duro Canyon State Park

Canyon, TX

The second-largest canyon in the country, with CCC-built cabins and a road cut in the 1930s.

Mission San Jose

San Antonio, TX

The “Queen of the Missions,” the largest of the four Spanish missions south of the Alamo.

Big Bend National Park

Big Bend National Park, TX

Eight hundred thousand acres where the Chihuahuan Desert, the Rio Grande and the Chisos Mountains meet.

Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum

Beaumont, TX

A reconstructed 1901 boomtown at the derrick that blew in and started the Texas oil age.

Ysleta Mission

El Paso, TX

Founded in 1682, the oldest continuously operating parish in Texas.

Buffalo Gap Historic Village

Abilene, TX

The 1879 Taylor County courthouse and jail, plus a dozen relocated frontier buildings.

Caddo Mounds State Historic Site

Alto, TX

Three earthen mounds raised by the Caddo more than 1,200 years ago on the El Camino Real.

King Ranch

Kingsville, TX

A working ranch larger than Rhode Island, founded by a steamboat captain in 1853.

Dallas Heritage Village

Dallas, TX

A museum of restored 19th-century Texas buildings in Old City Park, from log cabins to a Main Street.

Sam Houston Park

Houston, TX

Houston's first city park, opened in 1899, where historic homes from around the region were moved, including the 1847 Kellum-Noble House.

Ashton Villa

Galveston, TX

An 1859 Italianate mansion on Broadway. Tradition long placed the reading of General Order No. 3, announcing freedom on June 19, 1865, on its balcony; historians still debate the exact spot.

George Ranch Historical Park

Richmond, TX

A working living-history ranch in Fort Bend County telling four generations of one family, from 1830s Texas settlers to a 1930s cattle operation.

Log Cabin Village

Fort Worth, TX

A living-history village of log homes built by Texas settlers in the mid-1800s, relocated and restored in Fort Worth.

Fair Park

Dallas, TX

Built for the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition, one of the largest collections of Art Deco exposition buildings in the country and a National Historic Landmark.

Mission Concepción

San Antonio, TX

A mission church dedicated in 1755 and one of the oldest unrestored stone churches in America, with original frescoes inside.

Mission San Juan

San Antonio, TX

A Spanish mission moved to the San Antonio River in 1731, with a demonstration farm on its old irrigated fields.

Mission Espada

San Antonio, TX

The southernmost of the San Antonio missions, with a working acequia and aqueduct from the 1730s.

Spanish Governor's Palace

San Antonio, TX

A 1749 adobe commander's residence, the last remaining example of an 18th-century Spanish home in Texas.

Menger Hotel

San Antonio, TX

An 1859 hotel beside the Alamo. Tradition holds that Theodore Roosevelt recruited Rough Riders in its bar in 1898.

King William Historic District

San Antonio, TX

A neighborhood of 19th-century mansions built by German merchants, named for King Wilhelm I of Prussia.

French Legation

Austin, TX

An 1841 house built for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, the oldest documented frame building in Austin.

Texas Governor's Mansion

Austin, TX

A Greek Revival mansion completed in 1856, home to every Texas governor since Elisha Pease.

Pioneer Farms

Austin, TX

A living-history museum with farmsteads showing Central Texas life from the 1840s through the 1890s.

Bastrop State Park

Bastrop, TX

A park whose stone cabins and refectory were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, a National Historic Landmark.

Lindheimer House

New Braunfels, TX

The fachwerk home of Ferdinand Lindheimer, the "father of Texas botany" and founding editor of the town's German-language newspaper.

Comal County Courthouse

New Braunfels, TX

An 1898 Romanesque Revival courthouse by architect J. Riely Gordon on the town's main plaza, restored and still in use.

Sebastopol House State Historic Site

Seguin, TX

An 1850s Greek Revival house built of limecrete, an early Texas concrete made from local gravel and lime.

Spring Lake at the Meadows Center

San Marcos, TX

The headwaters of the San Marcos River, toured by glass-bottom boat, where archaeologists have found evidence of people living for some 12,000 years.

Sam Rayburn House State Historic Site

Bonham, TX

The 1916 home of Sam Rayburn, the longest-serving Speaker of the House in American history, kept as he left it.

Chestnut Square Historic Village

McKinney, TX

A village of restored 1850s-to-1900s homes, a chapel and a general store a few blocks from McKinney's square.

Heritage Farmstead Museum

Plano, TX

An 1891 Victorian farmhouse and farm buildings, the last of a 365-acre blackland farm, open as a living museum since 1986.

Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square Museum

Denton, TX

An 1896 courthouse on the Denton square with a museum of county history on its first floor.

Morton Cemetery

Richmond, TX

The cemetery where Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas, and Jane Long, called the Mother of Texas, are buried.

National Museum of the Pacific War

Fredericksburg, TX

Six acres of Pacific theater history in the hometown of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

Dallas, TX

The former Texas School Book Depository, preserved at the window where the shots were fired in 1963.

Space Center Houston

Houston, TX

Historic Mission Control, a Saturn V lying on its side, and the shuttle carrier aircraft.

Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum

Waco, TX

Two centuries of Ranger badges, Colt revolvers and case files, on the Brazos.

Buddy Holly Center

Lubbock, TX

The hometown museum of the West Texan who wrote the template for rock and roll in 18 months.

Texas Seaport Museum and 1877 Tall Ship ELISSA

Galveston, TX

An iron barque still rigged and still sailing, moored at the wharf she once worked.

Texas Civil War Museum

Fort Worth, TX

One of the largest Civil War museums west of the Mississippi, with uniforms, flags and artifacts from both sides.

1940 Air Terminal Museum

Houston, TX

Houston's original Art Deco municipal airport terminal, built in 1940 at what is now William P. Hobby Airport.

Frontiers of Flight Museum

Dallas, TX

An aviation and space museum at Dallas Love Field, home of the Apollo 7 command module from NASA's first crewed Apollo flight in 1968.

Witte Museum

San Antonio, TX

A museum of South Texas history and natural science, from cattle drives and the Comanche to dinosaurs.

Bullock Texas State History Museum

Austin, TX

The state history museum near the Capitol, holding the hull of La Belle, a French ship wrecked off Texas in 1686.

O. Henry Museum

Austin, TX

The 1886 cottage where short-story writer William Sydney Porter, later O. Henry, lived in the 1890s.

Collin County History Museum

McKinney, TX

A county history museum in McKinney's 1911 post office building on the historic downtown square.

Interurban Railway Museum

Plano, TX

The 1908 Texas Electric Railway station, now a museum of the electric interurban that once linked Dallas to Denison.

Fort Bend Museum

Richmond, TX

A county history museum in Richmond, settled by members of Austin's Old Three Hundred in the 1820s.

Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site

Washington, TX

The site of Independence Hall, Texas, where 59 delegates declared a republic in March 1836.

Casa Navarro State Historic Site

San Antonio, TX

The 1850s home of José Antonio Navarro, a Tejano signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836.

Sophienburg Museum and Archives

New Braunfels, TX

A museum and archive on the hill where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels ordered a headquarters built in 1845 for the German settlers he led to Texas.

San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site

San Felipe, TX

The site of the capital of Stephen F. Austin's colony, where Texans met in the conventions of 1832 and 1833 and the Consultation of 1835.

Texas State Cemetery

Austin, TX

Stephen F. Austin, Albert Sidney Johnston, governors, Rangers and Medal of Honor recipients.

Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery

San Antonio, TX

More than 160 acres of white marble, including dozens of Medal of Honor recipients.

Houston National Cemetery

Houston, TX

Rows of headstones around Hemicycle Plaza and its bronze Hill of Remembrance.

Dallas–Fort Worth National Cemetery

Dallas, TX

A national cemetery in southwest Dallas, dedicated in 2000 to serve the veterans of North Texas and their families.

Waco Mammoth National Monument

Waco, TX

A nursery herd of Columbian mammoths, excavated in place under a climate-controlled shelter.

Chamizal National Memorial

El Paso, TX

A park marking the 1963 treaty that settled a century-old border dispute without a shot.

John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza

Dallas, TX

An open cenotaph designed by Philip Johnson and dedicated in 1970, a short walk from Dealey Plaza.

Houston Police Officers' Memorial

Houston, TX

A stepped granite pyramid by sculptor Jesús Moroles, completed in the early 1990s, with the names of Houston officers killed in the line of duty at its summit.