Bowie County, Texas

The farming Caddoan Mississippian culture dates as early as the Late Archaic Period 1500 BCE in Bowie County.^[5] The Hernando de Soto expedition of 1541 resulted in violent encounters. Spanish and French missionaries brought smallpox, measles malaria, and influenza epidemics.^[6] Eventually, these issues and problems with the Osage, forced the Caddo to abandon their homelands. Settlers had peaceful relations with the 19th century Shawnee, Delaware and Kickapoo in the area.

French explorer Jean Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe founded the military fort Le Poste des Cadodaquious in 1719.^[7] The fort remained in continuous use until 1770. The Red River Expedition of 1806 which passed through Bowie County,^[8] headed by Thomas Freeman and Peter Custis, was of great diplomatic and economic importance to President Thomas Jefferson. Bowie County was established in December 1840 and reduced to its present size in 1846. DeKalb was the temporary county seat, with Boston becoming the permanent county seat in 1841.^[9][10]

Bowie County, in the years leading up to the American Civil War, was settled mostly by Southerners who brought their slave labor to work the cotton fields. By 1860, slaves outnumbered whites 2,651 to 2,401. The county voted 208–15 in favor of secession from the Union.^[11] While Bowie was never a battlefield in that war, it was occupied during Reconstruction. Between 1860 and 1870, the population declined. The occupation, and the new legal equality of blacks, became a hostile situation that fostered Cullen Baker.

Cullen Montgomery Baker (b. circa 1835 – d. 1869)^[12] was a twice-widowed, mean-spirited drunk who killed his first man before he was 20. When Thomas Orr married Baker's late wife's sister, thereby denying Baker that opportunity, Baker attempted to hang Orr. Legends abound as to his activities in Bowie and Cass Counties, including a rumored tie to the Ku Klux Klan. His exploits turned him into a folk hero dubbed "The Swamp Fox of the Sulphur River".^[13][14] He was a Confederate States Army veteran who joined two units, designated as a deserter from the first, and receiving a disability discharge from the second.^[15] Reconstruction allowed him to focus his anger toward what many at the time believed was a Union intrusion into their lives. Baker and his gang conducted a vicious rampage against citizens he perceived as being on the wrong side of the black labor issue, at William G. Kirkman and the Freedman's Bureau in Bowie County, and at the soldiers of the Union occupation. Kirkman unsuccessfully pursued Baker, killing one of Baker's men in the second attempt. Like Swamp Fox Francis Marion, Baker always managed to elude capture, often with the help of local citizens. Kirkland was murdered by "person or persons unknown",^[11] but Baker boasted of having done the deed. In December 1869, Thomas Orr and a group of neighbors killed Baker.^[15] A local legend has it the deed was accomplished with strychnine-laced whiskey.

When the Texas and Pacific Railway was constructed through the county, a new town named Texarkana was founded.^[16][17]

Bowie was hit hard by the Great Depression. Measurable relief came late when the Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant was established in 1942. The base was active until 2009.^[18] The Red River Army Depot,^[19] opened in 1941, remains active. The two installations occupied almost 40,000 acres (160 km²) and provided job opportunities for thousands.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 923 square miles (2,390 km²), of which 885 square miles (2,290 km²) is land and 38 square miles (98 km²) (4.1%) is covered by water.^[20]

Bowie County, Texas is one of only three counties in Texas to border two other U.S. states (the others being Dallam and Cass). Bowie County forms part of the tripoint of Texas-Oklahoma-Arkansas.

• Cass County south
• Morris County southwest
• Red River County west
• Miller County, Arkansas east
• Little River County, Arkansas northeast
• McCurtain County, Oklahoma northwest

• Darden
• Eylau
• Hartman
• Hodgson
• Sulphur

At of the census of 2000,^[26] 89,306 people, 33,058 households, and 23,438 families resided in the county. The population density was 101 inhabitants per square mile (39/km²). The 36,463 housing units averaged 41 units per square mile (16/km²). The racial makeup of the county was 73.26% White, 23.42% Black or African American, 0.58% Native American, 0.43% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 1.12% from other races, and 1.15% from two or more races. About 4.47% of the population was Hispanic or Latino of any race. In 2020, its population increased to 92,893;^[3] the racial and ethnic makeup of the county transitioned to 60.13% non-Hispanic white, 24.85% Black or African American, 0.60% American Indian or Alaska Native, 1.16% Asian alone, 0.7% Pacific Islander, 0.36% some other race or ethnicity, 4.65% multiracial, and 8.18% Hispanic or Latino American of any race.^[23]

Barry Telford Unit, a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison for men, is in an unincorporated area of the county, near New Boston.^[27] Federal Correctional Institution, Texarkana, is a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in unincorporated Bowie County, near Texarkana, Texas.^[28][29]

Bowie County is no longer one of the seven dry counties in the state of Texas. Both the city of Nash and the city of Texarkana (on November 6, 2013, and November 5, 2014, respectively)^[30][31] have passed laws that allow the sale of beer and wine.

Bowie County had voting patterns similar to the Solid South up until 1976. The county has consistently voted for the GOP in each 21st century president election. The last Democrat to win this county was Bill Clinton of neighboring Arkansas, with which the county shares the Texarkana metropolitan area, in both of his national victories.

These school districts serve Bowie County:^[33]

All of Bowie County is in the service area and taxation area of Texarkana College.^[34]

• Jean Baptiste Brevelle (1698-1754), early 18th century explorer, trader and soldier of Fort Saint Jean Baptiste des Natchitoches and Le Poste des Cadodaquious, the first European settlement in the county. Namesake of nearby Brevelle Lake.^[35]

Major highways present in Bowie County include the following:

•   I-30
•   I-49
•   I-369
•   US 59
•   US 67
•   US 71
•   US 82
•   US 259
•   SH 8
•   SH 93
•   SH 98
•   Loop 151
•   FM 44
•   FM 558
•   FM 559
•   FM 560
•   FM 989

• Le Poste des Cadodaquious, a French fort established in Bowie County in 1719
• Brevelle Lake, a North Texas lake named for French soldier and explorer of Le Poste des Cadodaquious
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Bowie County, Texas
• Recorded Texas Historic Landmarks in Bowie County

• Bowie County government
• Bowie County from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Bowie County from the Texas Almanac
• Bowie County^[usurped] from the TXGenWeb Project

33°27′N 94°25′W / 33.45°N 94.42°W / 33.45; -94.42