So the most important thing in understanding the development of Texas is that there are basically no rivers navigable further inland than Houston. That means it was mostly unsettled for so long not because it was unlivable or unfarmable but because there was no point to farming it, since you had no way of getting your crops to a demanding market.

This as much as the scrubland ecology is why the early economy was based on cattle, livestock being the only product that could move overland under its own power. Originally to Galveston for export to Caribbean slave plantations on land too valuable for cash crops to waste growing protein, later to the furthest south railhead for shipment to the stockyards of Chicago (which, built to connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River system, was and still is the linchpin of the American transportation network)

And this still matters! Like, one theory of modern American politics comes down to Texas and other “Sun Belt” cities offering better “affordable family formation”, in turn because they can sprawl outward 360° over the empty plains, as compared to other cities constrained by geography.

But that’s because those cities only grew in the Industrial Age past when cities had to be located around a water feature (or OK, maybe a mountain pass) in order to matter. Dallas grew up where it did because it was at the intersection of two railroads. Compare to the original Texas power city of Galveston, which (until a devastating hurricane) was not only on the coast but a Manhattan-style island