Texas is a state geographically located in the South Central United States and is also known as the Lone Star State. Austin is the state capital. Texas is the second largest U.S. state in both area and population, with an area of 268,820 square miles (696,200 km2) and a growing population of 23.9 million. Houston is the state's largest city. The Dallas/Fort Worth area is the largest metropolitan statistical area in Texas and the fourth-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States. Traveling east to west, the landscape of Texas gradually evolves from that of the Deep South into that of the desert Southwest, going from piney woods to semi-forests of oak and cross timbers, into rolling plains and prairie, then finally to desert in the Big Bend. These wide open spaces of the Texas prairie have lent currency to the phrase that "everything is bigger in Texas".[7] Due to its long history as a center of the American cattle industry, Texas is associated throughout much of the world with the image of the cowboy.