Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Uncertain Uncertain, TX

Uncertain is a tiny incorporated city on the western shore of Caddo Lake, about seventeen miles northeast of Marshall in northeastern Harrison County.

Nobody knows for sure how Uncertain got its name — one tradition says steamboat captains called it Uncertain Landing because shifting water levels made mooring difficult, while another says early residents were uncertain whether they lived in the United States or the Republic of Texas.

By the early 1900s the site was a sportsmen's retreat, home to a hunting, fishing and boating society called the Uncertain Club.

For a brief period in the 1920s, mussels harvested from Caddo Lake supported a pearl-harvesting business around Uncertain before tourism took over again.

Uncertain incorporated in 1961 as a Type B general-law city, largely to allow legal alcohol sales and promote tourism, and its irregular city limits were drawn to include most of the fishing camps and restaurants along that stretch of shoreline.

Most of the Caddo Lake shore resorts lie within Uncertain's city limits, and tourism has remained the town's economic mainstay ever since incorporation.

Uncertain once had its own airfield — Beer Smith's Caddo Lake Airport, nicknamed the 'Fly and Fish' — which is now inactive.

The 2020 census counted just 85 residents in Uncertain, down from 150 in 2000 and 202 in 1970.

At the 2000 census, Uncertain's 150 residents formed 77 households, and the median age was 56, reflecting the town's retiree-heavy lakeside population.

The city of Uncertain is served by the Karnack Independent School District.