Caddo Lake SP

— After several years of seeing photos of Caddo Lake State Park, I finally found some time to visit this beautiful lake in East Texas. Near the border of Texas and Louisiana, Caddo Lake was formed by floodwaters because of a massive log jam on the Red River. It was artificially damned in the early 1900s. The lake contains one of the country’s largest flooded cypress forests. The lake is arguably the only natural lake in the state of Texas, but when one considers that it was formed by a log jam and the subsequent damn, the idea of a natural lake can be disputed. The lake occupies an area of approximately 10,300 hectares (25,400 acres), and its name comes from the Caddoans, early inhabitants in the area until the 19th century.

On this first trip to the park, we arrived there shortly after some heavy rainfall in the area. In fact, some touring companies were not even operating at the time we were there. The park itself was open, but there was still some flooded sections. I could not tell whether the foliage colors we see in the photo above were a late occurrence or whether the trees were simply brown. The time of the photo was March 2018. Sometimes fall appears late in Texas, but I don’t think March is a time for that. The number of cypress trees in the park is enormous. There are about 190 species of various shrubs and trees in the area, but the Bald Cypress tree is the most famous in Caddo Lake SP.