Lone star state

The joke waddling towards me on the ample paunch of a T-shirted Texan was in questionable taste: "Why is it called Tourist Season," the convex garment read, "if we're not allowed to shoot them?" As a tourist, I couldn't help remembering that when Hollywood producers chose a state to figure in the title of a particularly nasty picture, the result was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas had passed a few days earlier. A hailstorm was blasting in from Waco, venue for the violent deaths of a hundred besieged believers. Texas is a big, bad state, right?

Big, certainly - the strange shape, resembling a coyote splayed flat on Interstate 10, measures 800 miles from north to south and from east to west. Texas occupies more space than France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland combined.

Bad, too, in the biggest cities. To paraphrase Apollo XIII, "Houston, we have a problem with everything from car thefts to murder rates". But in the west of the state, where the place-names testify to Spanish influence, grief is replaced by good. The T-shirt slogans soften to more amiable statements like "I'm drunk and I can't find my horse".

Sober up, saddle up and head for San Antonio, the spiritual heart of Texas. Here, you discover that the Texan assertion that it is a nation apart is solidly grounded in the state's history. Since the first European incursion, five flags have flown over Texas. The first was Spanish, whose conquistadors extended the frontiers of New Spain far into North America. Power was then wrested by an independent Mexico, from whom Texas won its freedom in 1836 at the battle of San Jacinto. Texas remained an independent republic beneath a single star for nine years, then became the 28th state in the Union. It sided with the Confederacy in the Civil War, then hoisted the Stars and Stripes once more in defeat.

The moment that defines the Lone Star State, though, is none of these. An abandoned Spanish mission was the location of a battle that still brings a tear to the eye of the hardiest of cowboys.

For 13 days in 1836, a band of 189 "Texas Volunteers" including such adventurers as Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie (he of the knife) were besieged here. The foes: a Mexican army led by the mad, bad dictator Santa Anna, self-styled Napoleon of the West. Finally, on 6 March, the defenders were overwhelmed and slaughtered to a man. When Santa Anna dictated his announcement of a "glorious victory:, an aide commented "One more such glorious victory and we are finished". He was right: six weeks later the Mexicans were routed by Texans united by the call: "Remember the Alamo". Today the site is a National Park, a patch of history plumb in the middle of a busy American city. Every day Texans make a pilgrimage to the collection of ramshackle and refurbished ruins, and their silent devotion is a moving sight.

The immediate vicinity of the Alamo compound, where once the Mexican army advanced, is now a swirl of tourists - targeted only by some assertive automobiles. You can give the traffic the slip by descending one of a series of hidden stairways to the River Walk, for a semi-subterranean amble beside the San Antonio River. You will have to sidestep dozens of pavement cafes, mind, because this is Margaritaville, TX. Life in Texas does not get much more sophisticated than Happy Hour on the River Walk, when the bright-ish, young-ish things hang out in T-shirts reading "Two beers or not two beers. What was the question?", attributed to one Billy Bob Shakespeare.

Mex meets Tex at Mi Tierra, the biggest and busiest restaurant in town. The mark of a good American eatery is that you have to wait for a table, and last week the line for Sunday lunch was 30 minutes long. A plate of enchilladas, the size of a small state and overcrowded with guacamole, rice and refried beans, weighs in at under $10 (pounds 6).

Wintertime in Texas, and the cost of living is easy. Price levels in the state are a good few notches lower than elsewhere in America. A room at the second-most historic site in San Antonio, the decliningly grand Menger Hotel, cost me pounds 70 - cheaper than many less-starred establishments elsewhere. And a car, which these days you need even more than a horse, is priced at pounds 40 a day including taxes and the right to drop it off 800 miles away at the far end of the state.

To become a bit-player in Texas: the Road Movie, just head west into the widest of open spaces. Heed the warning, though, of the car rental clerk: stick to the speed limit in the countless small towns that still see visiting motorists as a source of municipal revenue. Speeding fines, it is said, help to fund welcome signs like the straw-clutching one in Marfa. It implores visitors to enjoy the town on the grounds that it is "About the same altitude as Denver, Colorado". I preferred the wry invitation at the entrance to Knippa: "Go ahead and blink - Knippa is bigger than you think" (Oh no it isn't).

Western Texas is not about small-town pride, but big country boasts. An hour out of San Antonio you find pure desert, a landscape with the creased complexion of antiquity. Ragged rocks, spattered with odd spikes of grass and conspiracies of cacti, stretch infinitely on either side of a deserted highway. As the sun begins a slow-motion plummet towards the horizon, the rust-red hue of the terrain accelerates to stark scarlet.

Once darkness descends, shelter in the comfortable anonymity of a motel room and dine in the plainest of roadside restaurants (if you need a drink, just hope you are not in one of the 74 Texan counties that still practice Prohibition). Conserve your strength to tackle the Big Bend National Park.

The Bend in question is a huge turn in the Rio Grande, marking the frontier with Mexico. It loops around the ancient volcanic domain of the Chisos Mountains, which climb high enough to coax some moisture from the air. So the peaks that rise more than a mile high, like a set of monumentally bad Texan teeth, are clad in pine and aspen. A series of trails radiates from the park headquarters in the huge lava saucer known as the Basin. The most spectacular scramble is to the Window, a deep gash in the rim that threatens to decant the careless hiker on to the rocks a thousand feet below.

With pleasing predictability, the Window opens out to the west. Suitably wild it looks, too. The human futility of endeavours to harness the desert is demonstrated 20 miles away in the ghostly ruins of Terlingua. "Population: 25", promises the official state guide, though even that figure looks an exaggeration. This old mercury-mining town has decayed as rapidly as the health of those who sought to scratch a living searching for that elusive quicksilver. Little remains beyond crumbling homes and clouds of dust whistled up by the west wind.

Country music radio stations that seem more plentiful than people hereabouts, and any Texan road journey can only properly be undertaken while listening to one. The River Road snakes like a lassoo alongside the Rio Grande, and the AM signal drifts in and out with the uncertainty of the contours. Amid the static, I caught an unashamed serenade to a Stetson by Lyle Lovett: "Never complains and never cries," croons the singer. "You can have my girl but don't touch my hat."

Just before the DJ cued into "If you want to keep your beer cold, put it next to my ex-wife's heart", he told me my watch was an hour out. This state is so big that it straddles two time zones. Eventually, though, even Texas runs out. The mileometer clicked past 800, and the glass and steel of El Paso climbed out of the desert. As I climbed out of the car, the car rental clerk (perhaps the cousin of the one in San Antonio?) offered some advice about onward travel. Go over the border to Mexico, he advised: "Just across the bridge. That's where it all happens". He was wrong: the American automobile adventure happens out along the highway from San Antonio - where the Texan nation, and the joke T-shirts, began.

Texas survival guide

Getting there: Gatwick is Britain's gateway to Texas. American Airlines flies from there to Dallas, Continental to Houston, and British Airways to both. Simon Calder paid pounds 354 for a flight on American Airlines via Dallas to San Antonio, through Quest Worldwide (0181-546 6000).

Getting around: he paid Advantage Rent-a-Car (001 800 777 5500) $59 plus 10 per cent state tax per day for a small car with unlimited mileage and no drop-off charge. Note that under Texas state law, the purchase of Collision Damage Waiver insurance is not essential.

Getting sleep: he stayed at the following places (the rates paid for a double room are all inclusive of tax): Menger Hotel in San Antonio, 001 512 223 4361, pounds 70; Del Rio Motor Lodge in Del Rio, 001 210 775 2486, pounds 17; Holiday Capri Inn in Marfa, 001 915 729 4326, pounds 22.

Getting advice: the Texas Department of Transportation publishes an excellent free State Travel Guide and accompanying Official Travel Map. You can obtain these in advance from the Texas representative in London, First PR on 0171-978 5233; or order them from PO Box 5064, Austin, TX; or pick them up on arrival.

Oh yes there is . . . a Texan pantomime, Aladdin Texas, presented at 7.30pm tonight by the Stagefright Theatre Company.

Venue: Mandela Theatre, Longford Street, London NW1. Admission, pounds 5, goes to the London Lighthouse.