Due to its sheer size in nearly everything from food to fashion, Austin, Texas, a prominent city in the United States, has managed to live up to its state’s slogan over the years – everything’s bigger in Texas. For most visitors of the city, they find out this constantly rings true, as a huge list of tourist activities always awaits any vacationer looking to explore this historic city.

Austin is the capital of Texas, located near the center of the southern state, and has been one of America’s fastest-growing cities since 2000. While the rest of the country and much of the world took a huge financial hit during the recent - and still going - recession, cities like Austin managed to avoid the fallout due to a few reasons.

For starters, Austin isn’t heavily regulated by government influence. The lack of red tape via city planners’ overeager interference has left Austin and the rest of Texas free to grow. Texas, as a single state, produces more jobs than the other 49 states, and does so with lower tax rates and more personal freedoms than anywhere else in the entire U.S.

This is important to a lot of tourists who entertain moving to Austin. The fact that this city in Texas is actually thriving with opportunity means that people flock from miles around to stake their claim. Many Fortune 500 corporations, the Forestar Group, Dell, the Whole Foods Market and even Facebook call Austin, Texas home.

Texas won its independence via the Texas Revolution in 1836 and became an independent country with its own president and currency. The capital was named after Stephen F. Austin, one of the most influential figures responsible for the then country’s independence and subsequent growth. Texas then joined the Union in 1845, becoming a state, but the American Civil War would change that.

After the war erupted, Texas split off from the Union and joined the Confederacy, seceding from statehood. Texas came back to statehood soon after the war’s end and has been known as the Lonestar State ever since.

In the early 1900s, Austin’s infrastructure started to take shape and grow. The idea was to build an impressive capital city so that Texas would stand out and so that the rest of the state would follow in the city’s footsteps. None of that did as much for Austin as the music scene in the 1970s, however.

With acts like Willie Nelson, George Strait, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and other famous acts, not to mention the TV show Austin City Limits and the South by Southwest music festival, Austin became known as the music capital of the south.

Tourists have plenty of choose from in Austin, including the Museum of Art, McKinney Falls State Park, the Continental Club, Mount Bonnell, multiple country clubs, bars, restaurants, hotels and much, much more.