Piney Woods
Caddo Lake
The only large natural lake in Texas: 25,000 acres of bald cypress, Spanish moss and paddle trails you navigate by numbered boat road.
Caddo does not behave like a Texas lake. There is no shoreline highway, no wall of docks, no jet skis at noon. There is a maze — thousands of acres of flooded bottomland forest where cypress trunks flare out of black water and the channels are marked with signs the way streets are marked in a town.
Locals learned the boat roads the way you learn a neighborhood. Visitors should not improvise. Rent a paddle craft in Uncertain, take the Government Ditch out at sunrise, and let the fog do the work.
The state park side, built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, still rents stone-and-timber cabins. Book them months out, especially in October when the water is high and the bugs have quit.
Don't miss
- Paddle the Government Ditch at first light
- Cypress stands hung with Spanish moss
- Prothonotary warblers in spring
- CCC-built cabins from the 1930s
Nearby reading