Maps show where.
We ask why.

Why do seven Texas cities sit on one line?

From San Antonio through Austin to Waco, seven Texas cities were founded on an almost straight line 170 miles long, and west of it the lights almost stop. It isn't Interstate 35, because all seven are older than the railroad, and it isn't a river or the coast: no river runs along the line, and the coast is more than a hundred miles away. What drew people to this one stretch of Texas lies underground, and it helps explain the floods and the droughts the cities along it face today.