Westlake lies in the Cross Timbers, a distinct geographic region of North Central Texas marked by extended groves of oak trees bordered by open prairie. Early explorers and travelers noticed the area for this landscape, and as early as 1832 Washington Irving wrote in A Tour of the Prairies of the mortal toil and vexations of flesh and spirit involved in wandering through the Cross Timber, likening it to struggling through forests of cast iron. The Cross Timbers extends across parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and on a map appears in irregular vertical lines, like icing running down the sides of a cake. Benjamin Tharp's writings described it as timbered islands amid lakes of grass called oak savannas, a name for wooded areas broken by stretches of grasslands, and this landscape characterizes Westlake, Texas.