Did you know that the "Lone Star State" was almost not a star at all?

Big In Texas

I've loved learning about the biggest things in Texas. We are, after all, a state that does show off its state pride by saying,  "Everything's Bigger In Texas". We even had a state tourism slogan that was "Texas, It's Like A Whole Other Country". It turns out that Texas could have been a whole different state.

The Deals

There were originally four offers on the table for the area/state now known as Texas. One of those proposed land deals had land that included much more land south of our current border and land in the southern areas of what is now New Mexico and Arizona. One deal included our current border plus the land in New Mexico and Arizona. The biggest deal of them all included all of the above plus the entire peninsula now known as "Baja California".

The Cash

To have all that extra land would have just been a paltry 50 million dollars. Congress at the time took the smallest of offers for 15 million dollars, then whittled down that number down to 10 million dollars, which caused Mexico to chisel the land offers down to what we now call the Lone Star State.

What If?

State boundaries are weird, but a lot of them make sense. They are straight lines or borders defined by bodies of water. How weird and awkward would it have been to have to describe Texas as "The Mostly Southwest State"? Looking at the boundaries pictured below, I'm not sure what we'd be called had the 1st option for land purchases gone through. Then again, since we're speculating, there's always the possibility that Texas would have found dealing with that West Coast peninsula as too much and made a deal with California (Then maybe we'd be friends).

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