Texas covers a total area of . The longest straight-line distance is from the northwest corner of the panhandle to the Rio Grande river just below Brownsville, . The greatest east-west distance is from the extreme eastward bend in the Sabine River in Newton County to the extreme western bulge of the Rio Grande just above El Paso. The largest continental state is so expansive that El Paso, in the western corner of the state, is closer to San Diego, California, than to the Houston/Beaumont area, near the Louisiana state line; while Orange, on the border with Louisiana, is closer to Jacksonville, Florida, than it is to El Paso. Texarkana, in the northeastern corner of the state, is about the same distance from Chicago, Illinois, as it is from El Paso, and Dalhart, in the northwestern corner of the state, is closer to the state capitals of Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming than it is to Austin, its own state capital.