Texas topographic map
Sheet TX-19 · relief 0–8,751 ft · two escarpments · four mountain ranges
Texas rises like a staircase from the Gulf to the New Mexico line. Two long cliffs — the Balcones Escarpment across the middle of the state and the Caprock Escarpment on the plains — do most of the work, and almost every river, road and settlement line in Texas is arranged around them.
Zoom past level 9 and the base map begins to shade hillsides and show contour detail in the Hill Country, the Davis Mountains and the canyon country below the Caprock.
Landforms on the map
| Landform | Where it is | What it looks like on the ground |
|---|---|---|
| Gulf Coastal Plain | The eastern and southeastern third, inland from the shore to roughly the I-35 and US-77 line | Almost no relief. Flat to gently rolling, sea level at the beach and only a few hundred feet up 150 miles inland. Rivers meander; the coast is fringed by bays and barrier islands. |
| Balcones Escarpment | A curved fault line from Del Rio through San Antonio, New Braunfels, San Marcos and Austin to near Waco | A step of a few hundred feet where the flat coastal plain ends and the plateau begins. Springs break out along it. The old towns sit at the base of the step, which is why I-35 follows it. |
| Edwards Plateau | West of the Balcones fault, between the Pecos and the Colorado, centered on the Hill Country | A limestone tableland that streams have cut into hills. The high ground is the old flat surface; the "hills" are what is left between the canyons. Thin soil, live oak and juniper, clear spring-fed rivers. |
| Llano Uplift | A rough circle around Llano, Mason and Burnet counties, inside the plateau | A basin punched through the limestone where ancient granite is exposed. Pink domes of rock stand above the pasture; Enchanted Rock is the biggest, rising several hundred feet above the surrounding land. |
| Blackland Prairie | A belt from the Red River south through Dallas, Waco and Austin, east of the escarpment | Low rolling swells of dark clay with almost no rock outcrop. Broken only by river bottoms. |
| Piney Woods | Northeast Texas, east of a line through Tyler and Lufkin | Sandy hills 200–500 ft high under pine. Relief is small but constant, so you rarely see far. |
| Caprock Escarpment | Runs north–south through Briscoe, Floyd, Motley, Dickens and Garza counties, east of Lubbock and Amarillo | The most abrupt edge in Texas: several hundred feet of red and orange rock separating the tabletop plains above from the broken country below. Palo Duro Canyon is cut back into it. |
| Llano Estacado (High Plains) | Above the Caprock — the Panhandle and South Plains west to New Mexico | One of the flattest large surfaces in North America. No natural drainage to speak of; rainwater collects in shallow playa basins instead of running off. |
| Rolling Plains | Below the Caprock, from Wichita Falls southwest toward Abilene and San Angelo | Red-bed country: mesas, broken tables and shallow valleys carved by the Brazos, Red and Colorado headwaters. |
| Guadalupe Mountains | Culberson and Hudspeth counties on the New Mexico line | A tilted block of fossil reef limestone. Guadalupe Peak, 8,751 ft, is the highest point in Texas; the cliff of El Capitan below it is the landmark visible from US-62/180 for 40 miles. |
| Davis Mountains | Jeff Davis County around Fort Davis, north of Marfa | Rounded volcanic peaks with grass and oak instead of desert. Mount Livermore, 8,378 ft, is the high point. Wettest and coolest of the Texas ranges, which is why McDonald Observatory sits on top. |
| Chisos Mountains | The middle of Big Bend National Park, Brewster County | A compact ring of volcanic peaks rising out of desert floor at 2,000 ft. Emory Peak, 7,825 ft, is the summit; the Basin sits inside the ring at about 5,400 ft. |
| Franklin Mountains | Inside the city limits of El Paso | A narrow granite and limestone ridge running north from the Rio Grande, splitting the city in two. North Franklin Peak, 7,192 ft, stands about 3,400 ft above downtown. |
| Trans-Pecos basins | Between the ranges west of the Pecos River | Wide flat desert floors at 3,000–4,500 ft with mountains standing on them — the basin-and-range pattern that continues into New Mexico and Arizona. |
The two escarpments
The Balcones Escarpment is a fault zone, not an eroded edge. The rock on the southeast side dropped and the rock on the northwest side stayed up, so groundwater in the Edwards Limestone hits the fault and comes out as springs: Barton Springs in Austin, San Marcos Springs, Comal Springs at New Braunfels, San Pedro Springs at San Antonio. Those springs are the reason each of those towns exists where it does, and I-35 strings them together because the road follows the base of the step.
The Caprock Escarpment is the opposite process — erosion. Streams flowing east have eaten several hundred feet back into the High Plains surface, leaving a hard caliche layer capping the edge. West of the line the ground is flat enough to farm on the section grid; two miles east it is broken canyon country good only for grazing. Palo Duro Canyon, cut by the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, is the deepest bite taken out of it, roughly 800 ft from rim to floor.
Which way the water runs
Every major Texas river except the Rio Grande and the Pecos runs southeast, perpendicular to the contours, from the plains to the Gulf. That single fact explains the shape of the state's drainage: the Red, Brazos, Colorado and Trinity all start on the plains or the plateau and cross the escarpments through gorges, then slow down and meander once they reach the coastal plain. The Rio Grande is the exception, running southeast down the western edge and then east through the canyons of Big Bend. See the rivers map for the full network and the elevation map for point elevations rather than landforms.
Texas is usually divided into four physical regions that group these landforms: the Gulf Coastal Plains, the Interior Lowlands, the Great Plains and the Basin and Range. The four regions map shows where the dividing lines fall.
Relief shading on the interactive map comes from the OpenStreetMap base tiles; it is a general terrain view, not a survey-grade contour sheet.