Sour Lake, TX

Sour Lake is Hardin County's oldest surviving town, a southeast Texas city named for the sulphurous spring water that fed the nearby lake. The 2020 census counted 1,773 residents. People settled around the springs by the 1830s, and the water made Sour Lake a health resort before oil changed the town's fortunes. Sam Houston visited, early entrepreneurs bottled the water, and the Texas Company - later Texaco - got its start in the oilfield here. The boom years were wild: in 1902, Sour Lake's oilfield helped turn the town into a place with as many as 10,000 people and 52 saloons.

Today, Highways 105 and 326 cross at the center, the Alma M. Carpenter Public Library holds a historic marker, and the old spring story still hangs over the city. The old boomtown scale still shows in the stories people tell about downtown. Sour Lake's local scoop is a Texas town that went from mineral baths to oil rush, with Sam Houston and Texaco in the backstory.