Bowie County

Bowie County is in the far northeastern corner of the state, bordered by the Red River on the north, with Arkansas and Oklahoma across its northern boundary and Arkansas to the east. Boston, the county seat, is located near the center of the county at 33°27' north latitude and 94°25' west longitude, twenty-one miles west of Texarkana, the county's largest town. The county occupies 891 square miles of the East Texas Timberlands. The terrain is level to gently rolling; its elevation ranges from 200 to 450 feet above mean sea level. The county is drained by the Red and Sulphur rivers, which form its northern and southern boundaries. Most of the soils are either loamy or clayey. Mineral resources include oil, gas, lignite, and ceramic clay. The county also has abundant forest lands, and in 1981 its timber production totaled 10,292,035 cubic feet. Temperatures range from an average high of 94°F in July to an average low of 30° in January. Rainfall is abundant, averaging forty-seven inches a year, and the growing season is long, an average of 235 days annually. At first European contact, wildlife native to the area included buffalo, deer, bear, beaver, and turkey.

Archeological evidence in contiguous Red River County indicates that this portion of Texas was occupied by Indians as early as the Late Archaic Period, ca. 1500 b.c. At the time of first European contact, the area was occupied by the Caddo Indians, an agricultural people with a highly developed culture. During the last decade of the eighteenth century, due to epidemics and problems with the Osages, the Caddos abandoned the villages they had occupied for centuries. During the early 1820s bands of Shawnee, Delaware, and Kickapoo Indians immigrated to the area, but they had abandoned their settlements by the mid-1830s. Although White settlement of the county had already begun when these later bands of Indians arrived, relations between the Indians and settlers were relatively peaceful.