Don't let the drawl fool you--Dallas boasts a dynamic history full of explosive growth. The cityscape itself seems eager to measure up to the outsized personalities that forged the town's identity. A sixty-seven-and-a-half-foot-tall giraffe statue greets visitors to the Dallas Zoo, while guests exiting the Joule Hotel encounter the gaze of a thirty-foot eyeball. A colossal Pegasus glows above it all from its perch on top of the Magnolia Petroleum building. Subtler storylines also thread their way through the forest of glass and steel, from the jazz of Deep Ellum alleyways to the peaceful paths of the Katy Trail. Author Georgette Driscoll looks beyond the inscriptions for the events that shaped Dallas into the city it is today.

Witness the rise of a metropolis from the tiny frontier outpost of Waterloo into a world leader in culture and technology. Discover the lost treasure of Shoal Creek in Pease Park or just a sense of inner peace amid the koi ponds and waterfalls of the Zilker Botanical Garden. Like the bats of Congress Avenue, navigate Austin neighborhoods by sound, taking cues from Stevie Ray Vaughan's beloved guitar and Angelina Eberly's city-saving cannon. Award-winning tour guide Jason Weems charts a course through Austin's heritage, treading the back streets stalked by a serial killer and the stately halls of the Texas State History Museum.

Founded in an unlikely spot where dry prairies meet formidable mountains, Denver overcame its doubtful beginning to become the largest and most important city within a thousand miles. This tour of the Queen City of the Plains goes beyond travel guidebooks to explore its fascinating historical sites in detail. Tour the grand Victorian home where the unsinkable Molly Brown lived prior to her Titanic voyage. Visit the Brown Palace Hotel suite that President Dwight and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower used as the Summer White House. Pay respects at the mountaintop grave of the greatest showman of the nineteenth century, Colonel William F. Buffalo Bill Cody. From the jazzy Rossonian lounge where Ella scatted and Basie swung to gleaming twenty-first-century art museums, author Mark A. Barnhouse traces the Mile High City's story through its historical legacy.

An illustrated guide to Austin, Texas.