As a standard for mythical tall tales and legends, it comes as no surprise that Texas holds the national corner on stories of lost treasure.

This story about a 1927 robbery of First National Bank is so crazy it's almost hard to believe! A man dressed as Santa along with 3 other masked robbers looted the bank and escaped after a gun battle. They almost got away with it but a three days-long chase led to an unsatisfying end for most involved.

As the saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas. That includes the legends and hauntings with which the state is filled, thanks to a long past peppered with tales that range from sweet-natured to downright scary. According to Amanda Eagleton, team founder of Haunted Texas Paranormal, it is exactly Texas’s deep, rich, and complex history that comes in to play with hauntings.

In a state as big as Texas it is really not surprising that there are some mighty peculiar town names among the thousands of communities that make up this state! What is surprising however, are the mundane reasons for many of the odd-sounding choices. Of course there are also some very strange reasons for some very strange names!    

How many capital cities has Texas had? The answer, as with so many questions about Texas history, is: it depends. It depends on whether you are talking about French Texas, Spanish Texas, Mexican Texas, or present-day Texas. Nevertheless, forgotten history is full of surprises, and the story of Texas’s many capitals is no exception. 

In the summer of 1854, a destitute stowaway on a Texas-bound schooner was discovered and forced to work for his passage. After handling freight to pay for his travel, nineteen-year-old Abel Head Pierce, a native of Little Compton, Rhode Island, landed at the Texas port of Indianola five months after leaving home. The meeting between Pierce and the rich soil of the coastal plains of Texas might have been destiny. The young man would go on to amass a fortune in land and cattle, not far from where he first disembarked.