The Outdoors in Garrison, Texas

Garrison's outdoors begins with the land around it: the forests, farms, and timberland of Deep East Texas that built the town on ties and pulpwood. This is good hunting country, with deer, hogs, and small game in the surrounding woods, and the quiet country roads make for scenic drives in any season.

For residents who love the outdoors close to home, that woods-and-fields setting is the everyday appeal — room to roam, hunt, and enjoy the seasons without leaving the county. Hunting leases and private land in the surrounding country are a real part of the local outdoor life.

The Attoyac Bayou — the river on which Capt. Garrison first bought his land in 1884 — runs through the country southeast of town on its way to Sam Rayburn Reservoir. The bayou and the creeks that feed it add fishing, paddling, and wildlife to the area's outdoor menu for those who seek them out, winding through bottomland woods that are rich in birds and game.

It's a quiet, unpolished kind of outdoors — not a developed park, but the genuine East Texas backcountry of bayou and timber that has surrounded Garrison since its founding. For anglers and paddlers willing to find the access points, it's a peaceful stretch of water close to home.

For big-water recreation, Sam Rayburn Reservoir lies to the south — the largest lake wholly within Texas, fed in part by the Attoyac Bayou. Sam Rayburn is famous bass-fishing water, with largemouth bass, bluegill, and channel catfish, and its many maintained access areas offer boat ramps, camping, and day-use spots all around the shoreline.

It's a drive rather than a doorstep destination, but it puts world-class fishing and boating within reach of Garrison for a day trip or a weekend. Between the hunting woods at home, the Attoyac close by, and Sam Rayburn within a drive, Garrison makes a fine base for the East Texas outdoors.