Caddo Lake, Texas
October 12, 2023: We left Shreveport, Louisiana and within 9 minutes we crossed the Texas border. We would be in Texas for the next seven days. Our first stop was Caddo Lake, where we’d arranged a pontoon boat tour with Rich McFarland of Caddo Lake Bayou Tours.
Caddo Lake, in the town of Uncertain, TX, is composed entirely of bald cypress trees, many decked with Spanish moss. Water lilies, water hyacinths, alligators and other wildlife abound.
According to Caddo legend, the lake was formed by the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes. There may be some truth to the legend, as Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee has been documented as formed by that earthquake.
But most geologists believe that the lake was formed earlier, either gradually or catastrophically, by the “Great Raft”, a 100 mile (161 km) log jam on the Red River in Louisiana. This likely caused flooding of the existing low-lying basin. According to a 1913-1914 survey that dated timber there, the lake formed about 1770 to 1780.
According to Rich, an island on the lake named Taylor Island is where Lady Bird Johnson grew up. Also, Don Henley of Eagles fame has a lot of property on the lake and has been involved in protecting the lake from development.
Rich showed us a list of all the movies that were filmed on Caddo Lake, including The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), Do or Die (1991), Vanishing on Caddo (2021) and the Disney movie The Boy From Dead Man’s Pond.
Jefferson, Texas
While we were on our boat tour of Caddo Lake, Rich McFarland recommended that we stop to visit the town of Jefferson, TX. We were happy we followed his advice. Jefferson is a cute little town with a New Orleans vibe; wrought iron balconies are common in the town. On this October day, we found the town decked out for Halloween.
Jefferson was probably founded around 1841 on land ceded from the Caddo Indians. At that time, the aforementioned log jam, more than 100 miles long, existed on the Red River north of present Natchitoches, Louisiana. The Indians said that this log jam, known as the Great Red River Raft, had always existed.
The Red River Raft (or Great Raft) acted as a dam on the river and raised the level of Caddo Lake and the Red River several feet. This rise of Caddo Lake and the corresponding rise in the Big Cypress Bayou at Jefferson permitted commercial riverboat travel to Jefferson from ports such as St. Louis and New Orleans via the Mississippi and Red Rivers, thus the New Orleans flavor to the town.
Jefferson was one of the most important ports in Texas between 1845 and 1872. The town reached its peak population just a few years after the Civil War and is reported to have exceeded 30,000. During this time, Jefferson was the sixth-largest town in Texas.
When the Army Corps of Engineers cleared the Great Raft in 1873 using nitroglycerin, the river and Caddo Lake were lowered, making river traffic no longer commercially feasible. This eventually caused the town’s decline.
We especially loved exploring the Jefferson General Store, which was full of colorful and kitschy stuff from clothing to jellies and candy, to jewelry, toys, and Americana artifacts.
From Jefferson, we drove onward to Austin, a six-hour drive, where we would spend two nights.
Steps: 4,681; Miles 1.98. Weather: Mostly sunny, Hi 82°, Lo 61°. Drove 363.5 miles.
~ wander.essence ~ 
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