I’m back for another round of Exploring The Crew. This time I will be finishing all the landmarks in the South.

Let me tell you though, it was a challenge finding some of the remaining landmarks as they were in areas I had not traveled to before. It made for some great exploration for me and I was glad to visit some of these new areas.

I’m definitely ready to move onto a new region and look for the landmarks there which will be in the Midwest region. Without further ado, here’s Exploring The Crew Part 11.

Oil Fields

Oil is what helped shape what Texas is today. There are many oil fields in the state especially up in the northern part of the state.

Many people became wealthy in Texas as oil had been discovered on peoples land and so when the oil companies came in to extract it out of the ground, the land owners would get paid by the oil companies to get that oil.

You’ll see a lot of oil fields In use today especially with the new method called fracking. The game has a large oil field near Dallas that is used as a landmark which I thought was a good idea especially since Dallas grew very large in the 1970s and 1980s due to the oil industry (Houston did too).

Industrial Feedlots

This is another thing that played a big part in shaping Texas to what it is today as well as a few other plains states such as Oklahoma and Kansas.

Cattle are a big part of Texas because they’re meat is always in demand and so the industrial feedlot was born which is used to increase the amount of meat that each individual cattle can produce as fast as possible.

According to Wikipedia, feedlots are usually required to have some type of governmental permit as well as have plans in place to deal with large amounts of waste that are produced.

Texas is by far one of the largest, if not the largest state that has the most amount of feedlots. The game developers did very well by making a feedlot in the game as a landmark.

Dallas

This city is one of the main major cities that’s listed as being in the game. It’s the second largest city in Texas and one of the top 10 largest in the country.

One thing to keep in mind is that even though the city of Dallas is in the game, the entire Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex is not. That would certainly be impressive if it was considering this entire metro region consists of nearly 7 million people.

 

As I mentioned earlier, Dallas grew very rapidly thanks to the oil industry. While oil and other energy plays a part in the economy of Dallas today, it is no longer as reliant on that industry as it once was was because the city is home to a number of other large companies such as AT&T and a number other financial institutions as well.

Dallas continues to be one of the fastest growing cities in the country and the city, as least as far as its downtown area is concerned, looks nearly identical to what the city looks like in real life. You can read about a comparison I did about the game’s version of Dallas compared to the real life city, here.

Lake Whitney

Lake Whitney is a very large reservoir/lake in Texas that is not to terribly far from the Dallas area. In fact in The Crew, you can see just how close it is to the city.

In real life, this was created to help with flood control because in the early 1900s, large portions of Texas, especially in the northern part, would receive a lot of floods from overflowing rivers that would cause a lot of damage.

In the early 20th century, this very large lake was constructed on the Brazos River and today has a lot of recreation use as well as being used for flood control and water storage and it even serves parts of New Mexico.

A large dam was constructed as well as a large power plant to help provide electricity to the surrounding areas. This was all done in the 1950s. The game show cases the dam of Lake Whitney pretty well here especially since the landmark icon is right by it.

Fort Stockton

This is a town that is in the southwestern part of Texas. It’s not too big with a population around 9,000 people.

It was originally build as a major military outpost in the 1800s especially for the purposes of the American Civil War, but it was captured by the Confederates. After the Civil War, it was rebuilt to be much larger than before.

Like many other places in Texas and other parts of the US, Fort Stockton for a long time relied heavily on the boom and bust cycles of the oil industry.

The game developers thought it was a good idea to make Fort Stockton a landmark to visit which I thought was good because I hadn’t been to that particular area in the map very often.

Observatory

This particular observatory that’s located in west Texas in the game is actually called the McDonald Observatory in real life.

The McDonald Observatory is located in what is called the Davis Mountain Range or more specifically, Mount Fowlkes.

 

Not much else to say about it as observatory’s are constructed to monitor what’s happening in space.

It is a neat landmark to visit in the game as its way out in the western part of Texas. Wikipedia says it was constructed for a cost of $800,000.

Buchanan Dam

According to Wikipedia, the Buchanan Dam in Texas is a multiple arch dam on the Colorado River. Because of the dam, it has formed Lake Buchanan.

With that being said, it is very similar to the dam I mentioned above for Lake Whitney. The Buchanan Dam is also used for generating hydroelectric power as well as being used for flood control in the region.

This dam is not too terribly far from the cities of Austin and San Antonio in real although both of those cities are not actually in the game, unfortunately.

When you come across it in the game, it is a good sized dam and you’ll even be able to see part of the hydro plant that is used for generating power. It’s just one of many landmarks in the state of Texas that are to be found (and the rest of the South).

Port Arthur

Port Arthur is a small city in the far southeastern part of Texas and is partially on the Gulf Coast. This small city is known primarily for oil as it has the single largest oil refinery in the United States and at one time the single largest complexes of refineries in the country.

The population of this city isn’t too far from 60,000 and has fluctuated over the years. My father who worked at an oil refinery for nearly 40 years in the town I grew up in, talked about how at times the former company he worked for that owned the refinery would send him down to the refinery in Port Arthur since they used to own that as well.

They would send him there usually for a few weeks and then he would come back home. I think they offered to transfer him down there on a permanent basis, but I’m ultimately glad he remained where he did.

In the game, you have to cross over some large bridges to reach the landmark in the town which I thought was pretty cool as it’s definitely representative of the actual city.

Port Isabel

This small town lies right along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in the southernmost portion of Texas. The town’s population hovers around 5,000 and the only way to get to Port Isabel is a causeway.

The name of the causeway is called the Queen Isabella Causeway which unfortunately has a tragic history. Four days after the events of September 11th, 2001, there were barges that struck one of the support beams of the bridge causing one of the highest portions of the bridge to collapse into the water.

 

There were some drivers that were unaware that a section of the causeway had fallen and sadly, some of them plunged to their deaths.

The causeway was repaired and partially rebuilt 4 months later with better reinforcement as well as new warning system to let drivers know of driving conditions or emergencies.

Another issue with Port Isabel is that the town has been hit by hurricanes in the past that has caused extensive damage.

Just like in real life, you have to drive over a causeway in the game in order to get to the landmark in this town.

Presidio

I thought that this was an interesting landmark to stop by and see and that was included in The Crew. Presidio is a very old Spanish fort that was constructed in the 1700s.

It was originally built to help protect against pirates of the day as well as Native Americans during that time period.

It was eventually used by Mexico and later on the United States. It definitely has unique architecture to fit with the time period in which it was constructed.

When you drive up to this particular landmark in the game, you can see a prison crew working right by the what is left of Presidio.

Fort Davis

This is another major fort in Texas as well as a small town. It barely has over 1,000 residents as of 2016.

The actual Fort itself (not the town) is a US National Historic Landmark. Fort Davis was constructed in the mid 1800s, but by the start of the Civil War, it was evacuated.

A small contingent of Confederate soldiers manned the fort for a while, but after a deadly raid, the Confederates abandoned Fort Davis in 1862.

Today there are at least over 20 buildings that have been restored and there are more than 100 ruins as that make up the Fort Davis National Historic Landmark.

It was even added to the National Park System back in 1961. I like how in The Crew it is right beside some mountains and the buildings in the game definitely make it seem authentic just like the real site.

Dinosaur Valley

I had never really heard of this until I came across while driving in the game, but this area does exist in real life.

It is in Texas and it’s a 1500 acre park that lies along what is called the Paluxy River. It also happens to be a state park and is also known as a National Natural Landmark, according to Wikipedia.

 

There are supposedly dinosaur tracks at this park, but there has been controversy surrounding that since one of the original owners in the 1930s admitted that some of the supposed dinosaur tracks as well as human tracks were created by them in order to draw more people into the area.

Nevertheless though, there are authentic dinosaur remnants in some parts of the park as well as really old geologic formations.

New Braunfels

According to the description of the landmark, this town was established in 1845 and the name comes from Braunfels, Germany.

It’s actually kind of similar to the way other places in the US were named. There’s an Orleans, France and of course we have New Orleans, Louisiana here in the US.

This town lies northeast of San Antonio and is along the Comal River which is known as one of the shortest rivers in existence in the United States.

Now because of the town’s German heritage, there are festivals and celebrations every year. One of them is known as Wurstfest which is a German style sausage festival and another one is called Wassailfest which is held in its downtown district every December.

Space Center

This landmark actually lies outside of Texas and I was surprised I missed this one especially since its close to the space industries landmark. It was the last landmark I needed to find in the region of the South.

There’s not really much to say about this particular landmark since it really has to do with shuttle launches of the past, new research as well as communications with the international space station.

We’ve already seen some other space landmarks which include seeing a space shuttle launch and Cape Canaveral in Florida.

With this being the last landmark in the southern region, I’m ready to move to the next one.

The Midwest Region is Coming Soon