• Tour the Old City Park (website: www.oldcitypark.org), a pioneer community in Dallas featuring homes, a church, a schoolhouse and Main Street as it was in the days of the original settlers.

• See Dealey Plaza (website: www.jfk.org), the site of President John F Kennedy's Dallas assassination. There is a dramatic exhibit of the event at the Sixth Floor Museum. The John F Kennedy Memorial at Main and Market Streets is open all year round.

• Go and see the famous Southfork Ranch (website: www.southforkranch.com), home of the famous TV series' Ewing clan. The ranch is open daily, year-round for guided tours.

• Explore Fair Park (website: www.fairpark.org), home to the Age of Steam Museum, Dallas Aquarium, the Museum of Natural History (with a superb dinosaur exhibition), the Texas Hall of State and The Women's Museum: An Institute for the Future.

• Aviation buffs will enjoy a visit to the Lone Star Flight Museum (website: www.lsfm.org) and Texas Aviation Hall of Fame in Galveston, one of the finest collections of restored aircraft and aviation exhibits in the nation.

• Watch a daily cattle drive along Exchange Avenue in the Fort Worth Stockyards Historic District (website: www.fortworthstockyards.org), and capture the flavour of the Old West in the many attractions and activities.

• Visit the Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library (website: www.lbjlib.utexas.edu) in Austin, which houses over 45 million pages of historical documents and presidential memorabilia.

• Sign up for a tour of the pre-WWI battleship, Texas, once the most powerful battleship in the world. It is moored on the San Jacinto River near the Battleground Monument (website: www.sanjacinto-museum.org), which marks the 1836 battle for Texan independence.

• Tour the historic Alamo (website: www.thealamo.org), the 1836 site of a furious battle between a handful of independence-seeking Texans (led by Davy Crockett) and a large Mexican army. Today it is a shrine to Texan courage and patriotism.

• Learn about the early efforts of the Spanish to Christianise the native population in southern Texas along the San Antonio River. Tour the four mission churches in San Antonio Missions National Historic Park (website: www.nps.gov/saan).

• Go bird watching at the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, and see birds migrating to South and Central America along the Central and Mississippi Flyways.

• Time warp back to the frontier days at Buffalo Gap Historic Village (website: www.buffalogap.com), a reconstructed frontier settlement that tracks the history of Indians, buffalo hunters and settlers.

• View the Odessa Meteor Crater, the second-largest meteor crater in the USA at approximately 168m (550ft) in diameter. It was created when a barrage of meteors crashed to the earth between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago.

• Catch one of the historical research seminars at the Commemorative Air Force Museum (website: www.commemorativeairforce.org), home of over 100 flying-condition WWII aircraft and memorabilia.

See Contact Addresses for further tourist information.