Bowie County Texas map
33.45° N · 94.42° W · County seat: Boston · 923 sq mi
Bowie County ends where Texas ends. The state line runs straight down the middle of Texarkana's State Line Avenue, splitting a single built-up city into two municipalities with two mayors and two police forces, and the federal building and post office on that street was deliberately put astride the boundary so that it stands in both states at once. This is one of only three Texas counties that touch two other states.
Texarkana is at the eastern edge against the Arkansas line; I-30 crosses the county west to east through New Boston and Hooks. The long water body in the south is Wright Patman Lake on the Sulphur River.
Where Bowie County is
Bowie County occupies the far northeastern corner of Texas, with the Red River as its northern boundary and Arkansas on the east. Its neighbours run clockwise from the northeast: Little River County, Arkansas; Miller County, Arkansas; Cass County, Texas, to the south; Morris County southwest; and, across the Red River to the northwest, McCurtain County, Oklahoma, and Red River County, Texas. Only Dallam and Cass counties share the distinction of bordering two other states, and Bowie County forms part of the Texas–Oklahoma–Arkansas tripoint.
The county dates from 1840, when the Republic of Texas cut it out of Red River County, and it is named for James Bowie, who died at the Alamo four years earlier. Texarkana, the county's largest city with 36,243 residents on the Texas side in 2020, anchors a metropolitan area that straddles the state line. Paris is 67 miles northwest and Longview 68 miles southwest.
Two Bostons and one county seat
The legal county seat is Boston, an unincorporated community in the middle of the county, but the courthouse is in New Boston a few miles north — the town that grew when the railroad came through and left the original settlement behind. Court business is split, with a second county courthouse in Texarkana serving the eastern end where most of the population is. Old Boston, New Boston and Boston are three distinct places on the ground, which trips up more than one visitor with a subpoena.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population |
|---|---|---|
| Texarkana | City | 36,243 |
| Wake Village | City | 5,940 |
| New Boston | City (courthouse) | 4,624 |
| Nash | City | 3,817 |
| Hooks | City | 2,519 |
| De Kalb | City | 1,521 |
| Maud | City | 982 |
| Red Lick | City | 940 |
| Redwater | City | 849 |
| Leary | City | 441 |
Wake Village, Nash, Leary and Red Lick are suburbs of Texarkana strung along the western approaches; the Texas-side population figure above excludes Texarkana, Arkansas, which is a separate city in a separate county. De Kalb, in the west on US-82, and Maud and Redwater in between are farm towns.
Roads
- I-30 – the main corridor, west through New Boston and Hooks to Mount Pleasant and Dallas, east into Arkansas toward Little Rock.
- US-59 / I-369 – the north–south route through Texarkana toward Marshall and Houston; the upgraded loop section carries the Interstate 369 designation as part of the I-69 corridor.
- US-67 – the older highway paralleling I-30 through Hooks and New Boston.
- US-82 – west from Texarkana through De Kalb toward Paris.
- US-259 – south from Texarkana toward Daingerfield and Longview.
- US-71 – northeast from Texarkana into Arkansas; I-49 is signed on the Arkansas side.
- SH-8 and SH-93 – north–south county routes, SH-8 running from De Kalb up toward the Red River.
Wright Patman Lake and the depot
Wright Patman Lake dams the Sulphur River across the southern county. It was built by the Corps of Engineers in the 1950s for flood control and was called Lake Texarkana until 1973, when Congress renamed it for Wright Patman, the Texarkana congressman who represented the district for nearly half a century. Its flood pool swings the surface area enormously between wet and dry years, which is why the shoreline is largely Corps land and public parks rather than houses.
West of Texarkana, between Hooks and New Boston, the Red River Army Depot has occupied a large fenced tract since 1941. It stores and demilitarises ammunition and rebuilds combat vehicles and their components, and it has been one of the county's biggest employers since the Second World War. The Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant sat next to it and stopped production in the 2000s.
Texarkana itself grew up as a railroad junction and still has a working yard where the north–south and east–west lines meet. The restored Perot Theatre on Main Street is named for the Texarkana-born Ross Perot. The two Texarkanas share the federal building on State Line Avenue and little else in the way of government — separate councils, separate police, separate state laws twenty feet apart.