Deer Park, Texas in the context of Rohm and Haas

The Battle of San Jacinto (Spanish: Batalla de San Jacinto), fought on April 21, 1836, in present-day La Porte and Deer Park, Texas, was the final and decisive battle of the Texas Revolution. Led by General Sam Houston, the Texan Army engaged and defeated General Antonio López de Santa Anna's Mexican army in a fight that lasted just 18 minutes. A detailed, first-hand account of the battle was written by General Houston from the headquarters of the Texan Army in San Jacinto on April 25, 1836. Numerous secondary analyses and interpretations have followed.

General Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, and General Martín Perfecto de Cos both escaped during the battle. Santa Anna was captured the next day on April 22 and Cos on April 24. After being held for about three weeks as a prisoner of war, Santa Anna signed the peace treaty that dictated that the Mexican army leave the region, paving the way for the Republic of Texas to become an independent country. These treaties did not necessarily recognize Texas as a sovereign nation but stipulated that Santa Anna was to lobby for such recognition in Mexico City. Sam Houston became a national celebrity, and the Texans' rallying cries from events of the war, "Remember the Alamo" and "Remember Goliad", became etched into Texan history and legend.

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, 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.

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.