Old Town of Port Caddo
Karnack, Harrison County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Ancestral home of Texas Caddo Indians, this region gained a distinctive character in the 19th century. From 1806 to 1845 it lay in an area disputed by various countries and designated, from 1819, as the "neutral ground." Settlers living here were far from neutral, however. They became independent and resisted paying taxes levied by any "outside" authority. Port Caddo, founded 1838 on Caddo Lake, soon grew to importance, and its rowdy reputation grew too, as ship's crews, gamblers, and Indians filled its streets. Meanwhile, new towns and roads sprung up nearby. Continuing upheaval led to the assassination of the tax collector in 1840 and the townsmen joined in the factional "Regulator-Moderator War" from 1840 to 1844. When Texas proposed to join the Union in 1845, Port Caddoans saw a chance to end their problems and voted strongly in favor of statehood. From 1845 to the 1850's Port caddo thrived, growing to 500, but then declined as the Port of Jefferson and the county seat of Marshall drew away business. With the end of the great plantations after the Civil War, falling of the water level in Caddo Lake, and coming of the railroad to nearby Karnack (1900), Port Caddo gradually faded out of existence.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This region was the ancestral home of the Caddo people before it became one of the most contested corners of the 19th-century frontier — part of the lawless "neutral ground" from 1819, where settlers famously refused to pay taxes to any authority. Founded on Caddo Lake in 1838, Port Caddo boomed into a rowdy river port of gamblers and boat crews, and its residents plunged into the violent Regulator-Moderator War of 1840–44. It thrived to some 500 people after Texas joined the Union, then withered as rival towns, a falling lake, and the railroad passed it by.
Why it matters
Port Caddo is a quintessential Texas ghost town, its rise and disappearance mapping the whole arc from Caddo homeland to frontier boomtown to fading memory.
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Related events
- · Regulator-Moderator War
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Harrison County
Marshall, TX
Long home to the Caddo people, this corner of East Texas drew Anglo settlers from the southern states in the 1830s, many taking Mexican land grants before Texas won independence in 1836. Organized in 1839 and named for revolutionary leader Jonas Harrison, Harrison County became the most populous and among the richest counties in antebellum Texas — a cotton economy built on slavery that, after emancipation, left it with a large Black population. The Texas and Pacific Railway later made Marshall a major rail center, its shops and offices anchoring the town's growth.
Webster-Mimosa Hall Cemetery
Marshall, TX
Virginia-born John Johnston Webster brought his family to the Republic of Texas in 1842 and petitioned for land to build a home. The cemetery at Mimosa Hall Plantation began in 1844 with the burial of Webster's son-in-law, and its graves include five of Webster's slaves or freed people alongside family members and veterans of several wars. The wall surrounding the oldest graves was built by plantation labor.
Pope Cemetery
Woodlawn, TX
Pope Cemetery was established in 1863 in the Woodlawn area of Harrison County, in the piney woods of East Texas during the Civil War years. As a mid-19th-century burial ground, it marks the presence of an early settlement community whose families are remembered here.
Potter's Point
Smithland, TX
Robert Potter was one of the founding figures of the Republic of Texas—a signer of its Declaration of Independence, a shaper of its constitution, and its first Secretary of the Navy—who settled on Caddo Lake in 1837 and won a Senate seat in 1840. His fierce personal and political feud with William P. Rose turned deadly here: in March 1842, Rose's armed party surrounded his home, and Potter was shot dead as he swam across the lake seeking help. The killing became one of the frontier Republic's most notorious episodes.