Caddo Lake map
32.70° N · 94.10° W · Marion & Harrison counties · on the Louisiana line
Caddo Lake is the largest natural lake in the South and the only one in Texas that looks like this: a flooded forest of bald cypress hung with Spanish moss, spread across the state line into Louisiana. There is very little open water on the Texas side, so boats follow marked lanes cut through the trees rather than steering by sight.
The Texas shore is the western half. The straight north–south line through the water is the state boundary with Louisiana.
Where it is and how to get there
The lake sits in the far northeast corner of the state, split between Marion County to the north and Harrison County to the south. The usual approach is from Marshall, the Harrison County seat on I-20: SH-43 runs north about 15 miles to Karnack, and FM 2198 turns east from there for the last few miles to Uncertain and the state park. From Longview in Gregg County the drive is roughly 45 miles east on I-20 and north on SH-43. From Texarkana it is about 70 miles south by US-59 and SH-43. Shreveport, Louisiana, is around 25 miles east of the lake's far shore.
Jefferson, the Marion County seat, sits about 15 miles northwest of the lake on Big Cypress Bayou and is connected to it by FM 134 and by the bayou itself.
Parts of the lake
| Place | What is there |
|---|---|
| Caddo Lake State Park | At Karnack on Big Cypress Bayou, on the southwest edge of the lake. Cabins, a pavilion and stone work built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, a boat ramp and short walking trails through pine and hardwood |
| Uncertain | A tiny incorporated town on the Texas shore, effectively the lake's harbour: guide services, boat tours, fishing lodges and most of the public ramps |
| Big Cypress Bayou | The stream that feeds the lake from the west, and the old steamboat channel up to Jefferson. It is the one obvious navigable line on the map |
| The boat roads | Marked lanes through the cypress, signed with names such as Government Ditch, Whangdoodle Pass and Hell's Half Acre. Leaving them is how people get lost; the trees look identical in every direction |
| Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge | North of Karnack on land that was formerly an army ammunition plant, with bottomland forest and wetland rather than lake frontage |
| Karnack | A crossroads settlement on SH-43 west of the lake, the childhood home of Lady Bird Johnson |
| Louisiana side | Caddo Parish, where the lake opens into broader water toward Mooringsport and the dam that now controls the level |
Why there is a lake here at all
Caddo Lake exists because of a log jam. For centuries the Great Raft — a mass of driftwood packed into the Red River in Louisiana — backed water up the tributaries behind it, drowning the valley of Big Cypress Bayou and creating this lake. While the raft held, steamboats came up from the Red River and made Jefferson a serious inland port; the town's brick streets and nineteenth-century warehouses date from that trade. When the raft was cleared in the 1870s the water dropped and the boats stopped coming. A dam was built in 1914 to hold the level up, and the present structure replaced it in the 1970s, which is why a natural lake now has an artificial pool level.
The lake also has a place in oil history: the first drilling over open water anywhere in the world was done here, from platforms on the Louisiana side, in 1911.
The cypress and what threatens it
Bald cypress dominates the shallows, standing in the water with knees breaking the surface around each trunk, and the Spanish moss on the branches is an epiphyte rather than a parasite. The wetland complex was listed under the Ramsar convention in 1993 as internationally important, one of very few such sites in the United States. Its biggest current problem is giant salvinia, a floating fern that mats over the surface, blocks light and chokes the boat roads; control work goes on continuously and boats are washed between waters to slow its spread. Alligators, paddlefish habitat and one of the densest concentrations of waterbirds in the Piney Woods all depend on the same shallow water.
Hire a guide or stay on the marked lanes. GPS is of limited use under a closed cypress canopy.