Pine Island Bayou
Pine Island Bayou is a tributary of the Neches River located in southeast Texas. It runs about 55 miles from the northwest corner of Hardin County, Texas and flows in a southeastern direction through western Hardin County, turning east and defining the southern Hardin and Jefferson County boundary for about 20 miles until its confluence with the Neches River. Two significant tributaries of Pine Island Bayou are Mayhaw Creek and Little Pine Island Bayou. The lower ten miles of Pine Island Bayou and much of Little Pine Island Bayou are protected from development in the Big Thicket National Preserve. Excluding the last few miles north of Beaumont, the area is not densely populated, and some small towns include Sour Lake and Saratoga, the latter the birthplace of country singer George Jones.
Geography and biodiversity
The Pine Island Bayou drainage basin is the very heart of the Big Thicket. The basin is sometimes referred to as the "Traditional Thicket" or "The Old Bear Hunters' Thicket" and it has a high diversity of flora and fauna. It is a flat, low-lying region of floodplains and bottomland, with sluggish blackwater. The areas is characterized by swamps, cypress sloughs, hardwood bottomland, palmetto-oak flats, and baygalls. Some typical flora include water tupelo and bald cypress trees draped with Spanish moss ; rattan-vine and muscadine vine climbing through forest of black gum, water hickory, sweet gum, and several species of oak trees such as overcup oak, laurel oak, willow oak, and water oak. Dwarf palmetto may fill the understory in some areas.The black bear once common in the area were extirpated by the first few years of the 20th century. A few of the animals found in the area include northern river otter, bobcat, American beaver, American alligator, alligator snapping turtle, cottonmouth, and several species of non-venomous watersnake. One source stated that Pine Island Bayou had a total of 56 species of fish on record, including alligator gar, bowfin, largemouth bass, channel catfish, yellow bullhead, warmouth, and bluegill sunfish.