East Texas Is Hiding a Secret Nobody Talks About

Pine trees for a hundred miles, a red dirt road under an old truck, fried catfish on a Friday night and a lake so still it looks painted onto a canvas somewhere; that’s East Texas in one breath, and none of it's a lie. It's just not the whole story. Because under those same pines is a Superfund site the size of a small city, still being cleaned up decade after decade. A school that once vanished in a single afternoon, taking nearly three hundred children with it. And a lake that's been dying and somehow refusing to die at the same time, year after year, no matter what gets thrown at it. Here are 14 facts East Texas has been hiding from you.