Caddo Lake is a lake and bayouon the border between Texas and Louisiana, in northern Harrison County and southern Marion County in Texas and western Caddo Parish in Louisiana. The lake is named after the Southeastern culture of Native Americans called Caddoans or Caddo, who lived in the area until their expulsion in the 19th century. It is an internationally protected wetland under the Ramsar Convention and includes one of the largest flooded cypress forests in the United States. Caddo is one of Texas's few non-oxbow natural lakes and is the 2nd largest in the South; however, it was artificially altered by the addition of a dam in the 1900s.
Formation
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 was formed by that earthquake. Most geologists feel the lake was formed, either gradually or catastrophically, by the "Great Raft", a 100-mile log jam on the Red River in Louisiana, possibly by flooding the existing low-lying basin.
History
Caddo Lake has been utilized by Native Americans for thousands of years, but substantial commercial development would only begin with invention of the steamboat and USannexation of Louisiana and Texas by treaty in the 19th century. The cities of Port Caddo, Swanson's Landing, and Jefferson in Texas, and Mooringsport in Louisiana, had thriving riverboat ports on the lake. Gradually as the log jams were removed in the lake and on the Red River by Captain Henry Miller Shreve and then by the Army Corps of Engineers, the lake changed shape and eventually fell over 10 feet, destroying the East Texas ports and their riverboat industry. Industry once again came to Caddo Lake with the discovery of oil beneath it. The world's first over wateroil platform was completed in Caddo Lake in 1911. The Ferry Lake No. 1 was erected by Gulf Refining Company. The well bottomed at and produced. Oil derricks sprang up throughout the lake, around the turn of the 20th century, further damaging the fragile ecosystem. The oil industry left Caddo for richer fields at Kilgore and other locations in Texas. Texas tried to preserve parts of Caddo in 1934 by establishing a state park, constructed by the WPA. The establishment of the Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant on the shores of Caddo, in the mid-20th century, polluted large portions of the surrounding wetlands until its closure in the 1990s. Most of the former plant site is now a federal wildlife refuge. An ecologist named Lionel Janes conducted a survey of Caddo Lake in 1913 and 1914. Based on an examination of cross sections of bald cypress and hardwood trees and many dead stumps he estimated that the lake came into existence sometime between 1770 and 1780.
Wildlife
Wildlife inhabiting Caddo Lake includes owls, snakes, frogs, waterfowl, bobcats, river otters, beavers, eagles, and alligators.
The lake is currently "under siege" by a fast-spreading, Velcro-like aquatic fern, Salvinia molesta, also known as Giant Salvinia. Accidentally introduced to the lake by boaters, the noxious weed doubles in size every two to four days, rapidly killing off life below the surface. Most of the growth of the plant is currently on the Louisiana side, where officials have been focused on recovering from damage caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Efforts at removing the weed have included biological means via beetles that normally eat the weed but cannot survive the Texas cold and now include herbicide. The Texas Water Resource Institute's Caddo Lake Salvinia Eradication Project is evaluating multiple methods of eradication. See TWRI's website for details.
Since 1965 Texas's Caddo Lake has had hundreds of alleged Bigfoot sightings according to the North American Wood Ape Conservancy, as reported in the Travel Channel 2006 documentary Bigfoot.
