Ms. Howard: If you've ever visited Austin, you've probably seen the Texas State Capitol, with its tall dome and its pinkish red stone. It was finished in eighteen eighty-eight, and it is actually a little taller than the United States Capitol in Washington.

Ms. Howard: Here's the surprising part. Back then, Texas was land rich but cash poor. The state owned millions of acres of open land, but it didn't have much money to spend. So instead of paying the builders with money, Texas paid them with land, about three million acres in the Panhandle.

Ms. Howard: The builders could not sell that much land all at once, so they turned it into an enormous cattle ranch, one of the largest in the world at that time.

Ms. Howard: The stone came from a hill near Marble Falls. It is a kind of granite that Texans call sunset red. So the next time you see the capitol, remember that it was paid for with land, not with money.