[1] At the fringes, towards Central Texas, the forests expand outward toward sparser trees and eventually into open plains.

The East Texas region includes Kilgore, Tyler, Longview, Texarkana, Lufkin, Marshall, Palestine, Henderson, Jacksonville, Mount Pleasant, and Nacogdoches as principal cities in addition to, in its expanded definition, Greenville, Houston, and Beaumont metropolitan statistical areas.

However, Houston has slightly warmer winters than most of East Texas due to its lower latitude and proximity to the coast.

In East Texas and the rest of the South, small rivers and creeks collect into swamps called bayous and merge with the surrounding forest.

People of English, Scottish, Scots-Irish, and to a lesser extent Welsh ancestry predominate in this region, because of the history of settlement.

East Texas had been barely settled by Spanish and Mexican colonists, and the government decided to allow immigration from the US to bolster defenses against raiding by the Apache and Comanche.

The early isolation of the region and its links to the Deep South have resulted in the piney woods being described as a 'curtain' that demarcates a certain cultural enclave or bubble that distinguishes East Texas from the rest of the state.

The phrase is often used to describe the area; it appeared in a newspaper column in the Palestine Herald-Press, and in a late 20th-century tourist guide by Mike Dougan.

Counties generally included are Anderson, Angelina, Bowie, Camp, Cass, Cherokee, Delta, Franklin, Gregg, Hardin, Harrison, Henderson, Hopkins, Houston, Jasper, Jefferson, Lamar, Marion, Morris, Nacogdoches, Newton, Orange, Panola, Polk, Rains, Red River, Rusk, Sabine, San Augustine, San Jacinto, Shelby, Smith, Titus, Trinity, Tyler, Upshur, Van Zandt, and Wood County, Texas.

Moving north from the coast, Lufkin and Nacogdoches anchor the population center of Deep East Texas.

East Texas is within the Black Belt region, the fertile area that was the center of cotton culture and enslaved African-American labor.

According to the most recent linguistic studies, East Texans tend to pronounce Southern English with the drawl typical of the Lower South.

East Texas lacks the strong influence of late 19th-and early 20th-century European immigrants from Germany and central Europe.

[24] This assimilation pattern has often historically included conversion from Roman Catholicism, associated with French and Spanish traditions, to Protestant denominations.

United States settlers from the Protestant Southeast practiced some discrimination against Cajun and Creole migrants, a cultural attitude that persisted until quite recently.

While some East Texans associate with cowboy culture, most identify more with smaller scale farming of the Southern U.S., than with the expansive cattle ranching of the plains regions of Texas.

Several "sale barns" exist across East Texas, with weekly and monthly trades, as is common in other parts of the Deep South.

In the northern part of East Texas, awareness of the native and historical Caddo Mississippian culture remains significant.

In the mid-1800s, East Texas cities such as Marshall and Jefferson constituted a sphere of influence that led the entire state into the Confederacy.

Before that, during the Mexican and Republic periods, Nacogdoches and San Augustine were the most developed and influential cities in East Texas.

Many notable music artists have East Texas roots, including: George Jones (Saratoga), Miranda Lambert (Lindale), Kacey Musgraves (Mineola), Jamie Foxx, (Terrell), Neal McCoy (Longview and Jacksonville), Lee Ann Womack (Jacksonville), Janis Joplin (Port Arthur), UGK (Port Arthur), Don Henley (Linden), Ray Price (Perryville), Johnny Horton (Rusk), Johnny Mathis (Gilmer), Tex Ritter (Panola County), Jim Reeves (Panola County), Mark Chesnutt (Beaumont), Tracy Byrd (Vidor), Clay Walker (Beaumont), T-Bone Walker (Linden), Chris Tomlin (Grand Saline), and Michelle Shocked (Gilmer), among many others.

Many high-school bands in East Texas continue the tradition of military-style marching, unlike other parts of the state.

Residents of East Texas towns and rural communities fill high-school stadiums in support of their local teams, cheerleaders, bands, etc.

[27] Dez Bryant, a football player from Lufkin, formerly played wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys before signing with the New Orleans Saints (then getting injured three days afterwards).

Many other high-school sports are popular in East Texas, including basketball, baseball, volleyball, softball, and track.

Additionally, the East Texas Storm, a semiprofessional football team located in Tyler, competes in the Lone Star Minor League.

Prominent rodeos in East Texas are held in Beaumont, Nacogdoches, Paris, Longview, Gladewater, Huntsville, Lufkin, Athens, Palestine, Lindale, etc.

Prior to the discovery of the East Texas Oil Field, cotton, lumber and cattle were the predominant source of economic growth and stability.

[32] Additionally, the region has become home to many patent-holding companies, due to its legal system being particularly friendly to patent holders and hostile to out-of-state tech defendants.

[33] In 2009, Paul Knight of the Houston Press stated in an article, "some say natural gas has surpassed crude as king in East Texas.