Follow
French explorer Jean Baptiste Bénard de La Harpe founded the military fort Le Poste des Cadodaquious in 1719. The fort remained in continuous use until 1770. The Red River Expedition of 1806 which passed through Bowie County, headed by Thomas Freeman and Dr. Peter Custis, was of great diplomatic and economic importance to President Thomas Jefferson. Bowie County, named for James Bowie, 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.
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. 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) 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". 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. 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", but Baker boasted of having done the deed. In December 1869, Thomas Orr and a group of neighbors killed Baker. 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.
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. The Red River Army Depot, opened in 1941, remains active. The two installations occupied almost 40,000 acres and provided job opportunities for thousands.
Cemeteries
Links
The county is named for Col. Jim Bowie