Trees Older Than the Nation, Fish Older Than Dinosaurs RoadyGoat

The dark, mirror-still water around Uncertain hides two of the oldest living things you will ever drift past. First, the trees. Those flared, knobby-kneed bald cypress rising straight out of the water, draped in gray Spanish moss, are among the biggest and longest-lived trees in Texas. Some of them are reported to be many centuries old, standing here since long before this was Texas, before it was a republic, before the flag ever changed. A cypress out on Caddo can outlive a dozen human generations without moving an inch. Second, the fish. Caddo is home to the paddlefish, a genuinely prehistoric creature with a long, flat, paddle-shaped snout and a body plan that has barely changed in around three hundred million years. That is older than the dinosaurs. Paddlefish once vanished from these waters, and one of the quiet success stories of recent lake restoration has been bringing them back. So when you glide through this bayou maze, remember you are moving between living things whose family lines were ancient when the first dinosaurs showed up, and trees that were already old when the United States was brand new. Uncertain sits on the edge of deep, deep time.

RoadyGoat → · 9.4 mi away

A Bayou So Special the World Made a List for It RoadyGoat

For a town of fewer than one hundred people, Uncertain sits beside something with genuine global standing. In nineteen ninety-three, Caddo Lake was named a Wetland of International Importance under an international treaty called the Ramsar Convention, an agreement among nations to protect the world's most vital wetlands, especially those that shelter waterfowl. Caddo became one of only a small handful of sites in the entire United States to earn that recognition, joining a worldwide list that includes some of the planet's most treasured swamps, marshes, and deltas. Think about that for a second. There are enormous, famous American wetlands that never made this list, and yet this quiet East Texas bayou maze of cypress and moss, tucked against a town that cannot decide how it got its name, is on it. The designation later grew to cover thousands more acres, including land once part of an old army ammunition plant that has since become a national wildlife refuge. So the water you see from Uncertain is not just pretty. On paper, in the eyes of the world, it is one of the important wild places on Earth.

RoadyGoat → · 9.4 mi away

When Steamboats Ruled This Swamp RoadyGoat

It is hard to picture now, looking at this sleepy cypress maze, but Caddo Lake was once a genuine highway for steamboats, and that history ties right back to why this shoreline was ever called a landing at all. In the middle eighteen hundreds, once crews cleared enough of that giant Red River logjam, riverboats could churn their way up through Caddo Lake and along Big Cypress Bayou. Bustling little ports sprang up on and around the lake, and just upstream the town of Jefferson grew into one of the largest inland ports in the entire country, unloading cargo and passengers deep in the East Texas woods. Steamboat captains threading these stump-filled, shifting waters had to be part sailor, part gambler, and mooring a boat along these uncertain banks was no easy trick, which is exactly the root of one of the leading stories behind the name of Uncertain itself. Then the boom broke. When engineers finally blasted the last of the logjam apart in the eighteen seventies, the water dropped, the channels shallowed, and the steamboats stopped coming. The ports faded. The swamp went quiet. What is left is the calm, mysterious Caddo you drift through today.

RoadyGoat → · 9.4 mi away

Potter's Point

1837

Site of one of most famous events in Texas. Robert Potter-- a signer, Texas Declaration of Independence, a chief author of Republic's Constitution, first Secretary of Navy, Republic of Texas-- settled 1837 on Caddo Lake. A former U. S. Congressman, he won election 1840 to Texas Senate. After Senate adjourned in 1842 he tried to arrest his political foe, William P. Rose. On night of March 1, 1842, Rose led armed men to Potter's home. At dawn Senator Potter jumped into the lake to swim for help, but was shot to death. He is buried in State Cemetery, Austin. (1969)

Historical Marker → · 9.6 mi away

Uncertain - The Town With No Answers

1960

Uncertain, Texas, population around 94, sits on the shores of Caddo Lake. The name allegedly comes from early steamboat pilots who were 'uncertain' about where to dock.

9.5 mi away

Johnson, Lyndon B., Mrs.

1912

(Wife of 36th President of the United States) On December 22, 1912, in the family home 2.7 miles south, was born Claudia Alta Taylor. She was third child (only daughter) of Thomas Jefferson and Minnie Pattillo Taylor. Her father had a general store in Karnack for many years. Young "Lady Bird" (a pet name originated by her nurse, Alice Tittle) attended public schools in Fern community, near here, and in Jefferson and Marshall, and earned Bachelor of Arts and Journalism degrees at the University of Texas. On November 17, 1934, she married Lyndon Baines Johnson, congressional staff member who became head of National Youth Administration in Texas in 1935. The Johnsons are parents of two daughters, Lynda Bird and Luci Baines. During her husband's rise to world leadership-- as United States Congressman, Senator, Senate Majority Leader, Vice President, and President-- Mrs. Johnson added to role of wife and mother that of hostess to many of the greatest statesmen of the world. As First Lady of the United States, she is true to her East Texas heritage of love for gardens, trees, unspoiled natural scenery, and historic sites. She sponsors vital national programs of conservation, beautification, and historical preservation. Outstanding Women of Texas Series, 1967.

Historical Marker → · 12.3 mi away

Uncertain, TX

Uncertain, also known as Uncertain Landing, is an incorporated community on the shores of Caddo Lake seventeen miles northeast of Marshall in northeastern Harrison County. The site was once known as Uncertain Landing, so named, according to one local tradition, because of the difficulty steamboat captains in earlier days had in mooring their vessels there. Another tradition has it that the town name came from the uncertainty that residents had about their citizenship before the boundary between the United States and the Republic of Texas had been established. The latter uncertainty was a substantial benefit to residents who did not like paying taxes. In the early 1900s the site included a hunting, fishing, and boating society called the Uncertain Club. During the 1940s the community had scattered dwellings, a sawmill, several camping lodges, and some five other businesses. In a bid to promote tourism by providing an area with legal alcohol consumption, the community was incorporated as Uncertain in 1961. Former city officials claimed that uncertainty at the time of incorporation led to the community name. That year many of its 213 citizens were fishing-camp operators. The population of Uncertain was estimated at 189 in 1988, and the town limits were irregularly shaped, as they were designed to include most of the restaurants and fishing camps along that part of the Caddo Lake shoreline. Beer Smith's Caddo Lake Airport, known as the Fly and Fish, also lay within the boundaries of the community. In 1990 the population of Uncertain was 194. The population was 150 in 2000, but fell to 97 by 2015.

Tsha Handbook → · 10.1 mi away

Caddo Lake

The only natural lake in Texas, originally formed by the Great Raft log jam on the Red River. A mysterious bald cypress swamp draped in Spanish moss.

Natural Landmark → · 12.4 mi away

Dehahuit’s Caddo Village

1799

Dehahuit’s Caddo village was one of four Caddo (Kadohadacho) villages known to have existed in eastern Harrison County in the late 1830s ( see also the NORTH CADDO , MIDDLE CADDO and BIG SPRING CADDO villages). Dehahuit, chief of the Kadohadacho, is known to have lived at this site from at least as early as 1805 until his death in March 1833. Dehahuit and his village figured prominently in the 1806 Red River expedition journals of both Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis . The settlement site is located on Farm Road 134, approximately two miles northwest of Waskom. Like the North and Middle Caddo village sites, Dehahuit’s Caddo settlement was located on the Natchitoches-to-Pecan Point Road. The precise date the village was established is unknown, however, in testimony related to the Grappe land claim, two old settlers in the area indicated that the Caddo first occupied the site between 1799 and 1800. The village was referenced in the reports of both Lt. Joseph Bonnell in April 1836 and Maj. Bennet Riley in August of that same year. White settlers probably destroyed the village in the unrest that characterized eastern Harrison County in the winter of 1837–38, most likely in the period between February 20, 1838, when John S. “Rip” Ford surveyed the Francisco Valmore headright, and April 27, 1838, when the Americans surveyed T17N, R17W.

Tsha Handbook → · 15.8 mi away

Mooringsport, Louisiana

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Trees Older Than the Nation, Fish Older Than Dinosaurs RoadyGoat

A Bayou So Special the World Made a List for It RoadyGoat

When Steamboats Ruled This Swamp RoadyGoat

Potter's Point

Uncertain - The Town With No Answers

Johnson, Lyndon B., Mrs.

Uncertain, TX

Caddo Lake

Dehahuit’s Caddo Village

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