Cooks Lake to Scatterman Is a Marked Paddle From a Beaumont Boat Ramp

Texas Parks and Wildlife lists Cooks Lake to Scatterman as a 4.8-mile loop, generally a two-to-five-hour paddle depending on how much you linger. The launch is the Lower Neches Valley Authority Saltwater Barrier boat ramp at 6790 Bigner Road in Beaumont — a real public put-in, not a vague stretch of river.

The route is the local outdoors in miniature. You leave a city boat ramp, slip down the Neches River and into Pine Island Bayou, then thread into moss-draped cypress-and-tupelo slough and the oxbow lakes inside Big Thicket National Preserve. TPWD notes the oxbows are fun enough to explore that a short trail can fill a whole day.

Check the TPWD trail page and the NPS paddling page before going. NPS tells paddlers to carry a map, follow the trail signs, and check water levels first.