Lamar County Texas map
33.67° N · 95.57° W · County seat: Paris · 933 sq mi
Lamar County sits on the Red River in the northeast corner of the state, with Oklahoma directly across the water. Its seat, Paris, is the largest town on the Texas side of the river between Sherman and Texarkana, and US-82 and US-271 cross in the middle of it.
Centered near Paris. The winding line along the top of the county is the Red River — everything north of it is Oklahoma.
Where Lamar County is
The Red River forms the entire northern boundary, so the county's north-side neighbours are in Oklahoma: Choctaw County directly north and Bryan County northwest. On the Texas side, Red River County is east, Delta County south and Fannin County west. Lamar was carved out of Red River County by act of the Congress of the Republic of Texas in December 1840 and organized the following year.
Paris is the only city of size in the county and the centre of its own micropolitan statistical area. Sherman is about 60 miles west along US-82; McKinney is 70 miles southwest and the Dallas suburbs another 10 to 15 miles beyond that. Texarkana lies roughly 90 miles east on US-82. The county is in the 4th congressional district and on Central Time.
Mirabeau B. Lamar, whom the county is named for, served as president of the Republic of Texas from 1838 to 1841 and pushed the government's move to Austin. The seat's name is the older of the two: the townsite was called Paris before the county existed.
Cities and towns
| Place | Type | 2020 population in county |
|---|---|---|
| Paris (county seat) | City | 24,475 |
| Reno | City | 3,459 |
| Blossom | City | 1,399 |
| Roxton | City | 549 |
| Deport (part) | City | 523 |
| Toco | City | 92 |
| Sun Valley | City | 72 |
Deport straddles the line with Red River County; only the Lamar County part is counted here.
Roads
- US-82 – the main east–west route, in from Honey Grove and Fannin County, through Paris and Blossom, and on east to Clarksville and Texarkana.
- US-271 – runs north from Paris to the Red River bridge at Hugo, Oklahoma, and south toward Mount Pleasant and Tyler.
- Loop 286 – the ring road around Paris; every other route in the county meets it.
- SH-19 – south from Paris toward Sulphur Springs and Emory.
- SH-24 – southwest from Paris through Roxton toward Cooper and Commerce.
The Red River line
The boundary here is not the middle of the river. Under the settlement of the Texas–Oklahoma dispute, the state line follows the south bank of the Red River, so the water itself is in Oklahoma and the Texas edge shifts whenever the channel does. Road crossings are scarce: from Lamar County the way into Oklahoma is US-271 north of Paris to the Hugo bridge. The bottomland along the river is farmed and hunted rather than built on, and Sanders Creek, Pine Creek and the Sulphur watershed drain the rest of the county south and east.
Pat Mayse Lake, a Corps of Engineers reservoir on Sanders Creek north of Paris off US-271, is the county's main body of open water and supplies the city. The Caddo National Grassland — restored prairie and hardwood managed by the U.S. Forest Service — lies just west, over the line in Fannin County, and the same rolling blackland and post-oak country continues into Lamar.
Paris
Paris rebuilt its downtown after a fire in 1916, which is why the square and the surrounding blocks share one period of brick commercial architecture. The town's best-known landmark is a scaled Eiffel Tower on the south side wearing a red cowboy hat, put up as a rejoinder to the replicas in the other Parises. Paris Junior College and the regional hospital make the city the service centre for four or five counties, and the population of 24,475 in 2020 was roughly half of everyone in Lamar County.