AUSTIN - Today Commissioner George P. Bush announced the Texas General Land Office will lend 50 maps of Texas, representing more than 400 years of its history, to the Houston Museum of Natural Science for a nine-month exhibition opening January 27, 2017. Mapping Texas: From Frontier to the Lone Star State opens just in time to welcome visitors to Houston for Super Bowl LI. 

"People from all over the world will be converging on Houston for Super Bowl LI on February 5," said Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. "While in Houston, they will have the chance to see why 'everything is bigger in Texas,' when they visit the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Through this exhibit, showing more than 400 years of Texas cartographic history, visitors will have the opportunity to see the formation of Texas, from an unnamed frontier in the New World, to a small outpost of New Spain, to the huge, bustling state that now leads the nation. Residents and visitors will be able to visualize how the fourth largest city in the U.S., Houston, and the third most populous county in the U.S., Harris County, grew into an economic powerhouse because of the Houston Ship Channel and the growth of railroads in the region."