Sabine Lake  Sabine Lake is a bay on the Gulf coasts of Texas and Louisiana, located approximately east of Houston and west of Baton Rouge, adjoining the city of Port Arthur. The lake is formed by the confluence of the Neches and Sabine Rivers and connects to the Gulf of Mexico through Sabine Pass. It forms part of the Texas–Louisiana border, falling within Jefferson and Orange Counties in Texas and Cameron Parish, Louisiana. Sabine Lake is one of seven major estuaries along the Gulf Coast of Texas. Much of the Louisiana shore is protected by the Sabine National Wildlife Refuge. There is a long history of human habitation around the lake, including Native American settlement dating back at least 1,500 years, European exploration in the eighteenth century, and the growth of Port Arthur in the twentieth century. Today the lake serves as part of the Sabine–Neches Waterway and the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway and is a center for the shipping and petrochemical industries. Archaeological evidence indicates that Native American groups from the Marksville culture were present near the shores of Sabine Lake by . Burial mounds that may have belonged to the Karankawa have been uncovered near the north shore at what is now Port Neches, but by the time of European arrival in the eighteenth century the region was inhabited by the Atakapa. English explorers led by George Gauld mapped the lake in 1777; Spanish explorers under Antonio Gil Y'Barbo visited the lake the same year, and an expedition under José Antonio de Evia mapped the lake in 1785 as part of a survey of the Texas coast. In the early 1800s Sabine Lake was used to ship slaves and other contraband into the region by smugglers including the pirate Jean Lafitte. The waterway was also used to move timber and cotton out from the interior. With the 1801 Treaty of Aranjuez the lake became part of the border between French Louisiana and Spanish Texas. After the Louisiana Purchase Sabine Lake formed part of the United States' border with Spanish Texas, then Mexican Texas, and finally the Republic of Texas. During the Republic period the American and Texan customs agencies came into significant conflict over the taxation of shipping on the lake, but with the Texas annexation Sabine Lake instead became part of the border between the U.S. states of Louisiana and Texas. The lake's shores were only intermittently settled and abandoned in the mid-to-late 1800s, and the 1886 Indianola hurricane destroyed the only significant settlements nearby at Sabine Pass and Johnson Bayou.