Caddo Lake

How the lake got here is still argued. Most geologists think the Great Raft, a 100-mile log jam on the Red River, flooded a low basin gradually or suddenly, and timber from a federal survey of 1913 and 1914 suggests it formed around 1770 to 1780. Wikipedia reports a Caddo legend crediting the 1811 and 1812 New Madrid earthquakes, plausible because Reelfoot Lake formed that way, though geologists generally favor an earlier date. Clearing the raft lowered the water by more than ten feet and ended riverboat trade on the lake.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum — 1.7 mi
  The state's first public petroleum museum in Oil City, on the 1905 Caddo Parish strike and the 1911 over-water well on Caddo Lake, with a derrick and a log-jam exhibit.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 12 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 12 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park on the Texas shore of Caddo Lake, where the Caddo told of a lake made by wind-driven water and visitors now paddle Big Cypress Bayou past moss-hung bald cypress.
• Shreveport Water Works Museum — 19 mi
  An 1887 brick pumping station on McNeill Street where Worthington steam pumps ran until 1980, now a free museum and a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter — steps away
• First Over Water Oil Well — steps away
• Trees City Office & Bank — 1.0 mi
• Oil City — 1.1 mi