Northeast Texas

Northeast Texas
Region
From top, left to right: Plaza Tower in Tyler; North Broadway Avenue in Tyler; Downtown Longview; State Line Avenue in Texarkana; Paris Commercial Historic District; Downtown Palestine; Downtown Marshall; and Downtown Kilgore
Northeast Texas counties in red
Country	United States
State	Texas
Largest city	Tyler
Population  (2020)
• Total	1,152,223[1][2][3][4]

Northeast Texas is a cultural and geographic region in the northeast corner of the U.S. state of Texas. Geographically centered on two metropolitan areas strung along Interstate 20—Tyler in the west and Kilgore, Longview, Marshall to the east,^[5] the areas of Greenville, Mount Pleasant, Sulphur Springs, Paris, and Texarkana in the north primarily along Interstate 30, and Jacksonville and Palestine to the south are also major cities within the region. Most of Northeast Texas is included in the interstate region of the Ark-La-Tex.^[6]

The region is unique in that it is the only portion of East Texas that is not within the direct sphere of influence of either Dallas/Fort Worth or Houston. This generally weakens the area's visibility as areas in the far south ally themselves with Houston and areas to the west ally themselves with Dallas. These areas are on the fringe of those cities' spheres of influence, so are not as visible as smaller cities such as Grapevine or Deer Park, which are closer to the respective centers of power.

In the mid-19th century, Marshall and Jefferson constituted a sphere of influence that led the entire state into the Confederate States of America, and during the Mexican and Republic periods, Nacogdoches and San Augustine were the most developed and influential cities in Northeast Texas. Nacogdoches rebelled against Mexican rule in the Fredonian Rebellion and had one of the first newspapers to run the phrase Remember the Alamo!; while none of these three cities is a major population center in its own right on the state level any longer, all four are still major cultural centers, with Nacogdoches and Tyler being well-established centers of higher learning.^[7][8] Many of the largest cities in Northeast Texas still follow a rural Southern way of life, especially in dialect, mannerisms, religion, and cuisine.