The Texas Myth also embraces legendary sports teams and the fans that cheer them on; a down-home cuisine featuring Tex-Mex, chili, and ranch-style barbecue; and colorful politics across the spectrum, including outspoken liberals like Lyndon Johnson and former governor Ann Richards. Oil and cattle wealth built a legacy of achievement in the arts: Texas boasts some of the nation's leading museums as well as stellar opera, theater, and dance companies. Equally celebrated are Texas folk arts. Influential performers and trends in popular music are born here: Buddy Holly, Willie Nelson, and Lyle Lovett, to name just a few. And the Texas Myth has long enthralled movie and TV audiences, from Red River and Giant to The Last Picture Show, Dallas, and Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.

THE ALAMO

More than just the defining moment in Texas history, the heroic defense of the Alamo has staked a place in the national imagination. Texas's creation myth was born on March 6, 1836, when 1500 assault troops commanded by the Mexican dictator Antonio Lopes de Santa Anna Stormed the San Antonio de Valero mission, slaughtering the 183 defenders almost to the last man. The Alamo martyrs gave their yet-to-be-declared republic a rallying cry that echoed les than two months later, when Sam Houston and some 900 Texas Volunteers routed the Mexican army along the San Jacinto River and took Santa Anna prisoner. The victory was cast as a triumph of freedom-loving Americans over Mexican tyranny, an interpretation that cast a long shadow over Texas's relationship with Mexico and those of Mexican descent.

OIL TRANSFORMED TEXAS

Oil transformed Texas: from a poor state into a rich state, from a rural state into an urban state. Texans had been drilling wells since just after the Civil War, but the oil era began in 1901 when the Spindletop gusher blew, in nine days spouting as much oil as the entire previous year's production. The find of the century, however, was the 43-mile-long East Texas Oil Field, a subterranean lake of oil discovered in 1930 when Columbus Marion "Dad" Joiner's rickety timber rig, Daisy Bradford No. 3, stuck pay dirt. Joiner was soon relieved of his windfall, selling his leases for $30000 to H. L. Hunt, who went on to become nation's richest man. But the entire state shared the wealth. Sharecroppers left their tenant farms for the much better-paying work in the oil fields, leading a hugh Depression-era exodus from the land. By 1980, Texas had three of the nation's ten largest cities, an economy that rustbelt states could only envy, and a lexicon enriched with "awl patch" terms like wildcatter and roughneck.

The Corporate Headquarter of Landmark Graphics (A Halliburton Company) is located at 2101 City West Blvd. Houston, Texas 77042-2827. Almost 20 years ago, Landmark Graphics Corporation first established a new standard in the energy industry when it helped launch an era of computer-aided exploration that focused on 3-D seismic interpretation. Since that time, the company has continued to lead the industry through the development of new, innovative technologies and integrated solutions that enable customers to achieve greater levels of productivity and efficiency. In the 1990s, Landmark's products and solutions expanded to include the widest breadth of integrated exploration, drilling and production solutions available across the oilfield life cycle. Landmark software, information management technology, computing infrastructure and professional services enable petroleum companies to find, produce and manage oil and gas reserves more effectively than at any time in the past.

" HOUSTON, WE HAVE A ROCKET "

The first word spoken from another celestial body was "Houston." The 340-foot-tall Saturn V rocket that got us there, displayed supine at NASA's Clear Lake City campus, is as awe-inspiring as anything made by humans.

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