Shreveport Regional

Caddo Lake is the only natural lake in Texas (every other lake in the state is man-made). The lake was formed by a massive log jam on the Red River in the early 1800s — though legend credits an earthquake. From the air, Caddo Lake looks nothing like a typical lake: it's a maze of bayous, sloughs, and cypress-lined channels draped in Spanish moss. The ancient bald cypress trees standing in the water create patterns that look more like Louisiana swamp than Texas. The lake straddles the Texas-Louisiana border and is one of the most ecologically significant wetlands in the South.

America's oldest federally protected land — set aside as the Hot Springs Reservation in 1832, four decades before Yellowstone became the first national park in 1872. Promoted to national park status in 1921; at 5,500 acres it's the second-smallest in the system (only Gateway Arch is smaller). The park is unusual in being embedded inside the city of Hot Springs — Bathhouse Row is the urban core, eight preserved bathhouses on Central Avenue built between 1892 and 1923 (Buckstaff, Fordyce, Hale, Lamar, Maurice, Ozark, Quapaw, and Superior), all originally drawing on 47 natural hot springs that emerge from the lower slopes of Hot Springs Mountain at 143°F. The water that comes out today fell as rain about 4,400 years ago and traveled roughly 6,000 feet down through fractured Ouachita sandstone before reaching the surface. From the 1880s onward, Hot Springs was the birthplace of Major League Baseball spring training — Babe Ruth, Cy Young, and later Jackie Robinson trained at the bathhouse gyms. Prohibition-era illegal gambling brought Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. Today: two operating bathhouses (Buckstaff and Quapaw), the Superior is the only craft brewery inside any U.S. national park, and KHOT Memorial Field sits four miles south.

On January 10, 1901, the Lucas Gusher at Spindletop Hill near Beaumont erupted with a force that shot oil 150 feet in the air, producing 100,000 barrels per day — more than all other oil wells in the US combined. It blew for nine days before being capped. That single well launched the modern petroleum industry, made Texas an energy superpower, and fueled the creation of Gulf Oil, Texaco, and Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil). A replica derrick and the Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum mark the site. From the air, the low dome of Spindletop Hill is barely visible — hard to believe this gentle rise changed the course of world history.

Reunion Tower has marked the southwest edge of downtown Dallas since April 1978. Locals call it The Ball. The 561-foot tower carries a geodesic sphere on three slim concrete shafts, topped with 259 LED lights that change color and pattern through the year — green for St. Patrick's Day, red-white-and-blue for July 4, holiday animations every December. The observation level — the GeO-Deck, named for the geodesic shape — sits at 470 feet. The name "Reunion" comes from La Réunion, a French utopian colony founded on this site in 1855; it failed within 18 months. When the tower's lights first came on in 1978, traffic on highways leading into downtown stopped. Police and fire switchboards were overloaded for fifteen minutes. The Ball appears in the opening credits of every season of the television series Dallas.