The Texas Capitol, designed by architect Elijah E. Myers (who also designed the Michigan and Colorado state houses) and completed in 1888 as the winning design from a national competition, features structural exterior walls of "sunset red" granite, quarried just 50 miles from the site. (Myers was fired from the Texas Capitol project in 1886 over complaints that he was not giving enough attention to the project, and his design was somewhat changed.)

Texas paid for the construction not in dollars, but in land: some three million acres in the Texas Panhandle that would later become the famous XIT Ranch.

The 1888 Texas Capitol is the largest in gross square footage of all state capitols and is second in total size only to the National Capitol in Washington, D.C. Like several other state capitols, the 1888 Texas Capitol surpasses the National Capitol in height, rising almost 15 feet above its Washington counterpart. Photo by Carol Highsmith.