Sour Lake, Texas
Sour Lake sits in Hardin County in the wooded coastal plain of Southeast Texas, about 17 miles west of Beaumont. The town takes its name from a natural mineral spring, and it is historically significant as an early Texas oil boomtown, with production from the nearby Sour Lake field in the early days of the state's petroleum industry. The surrounding landscape is flat and timbered, on the edge of the Big Thicket.
Place essentials
Official Census snapshot- Census place type
- City
- July 2025 population
- 1,841
- Change from 2020 base
- +3.8%
- Land area
- 2.3 sq. mi.
- County footprint
- Hardin County
Place type, county footprint, and land area use the Census Bureau's January 1, 2025 geography. Population uses Vintage 2025 estimates through July 1, 2025; change compares that estimate with the April 1, 2020 estimates base. Geography file | Population file
Property here runs through the appraisal district and tax office for Hardin County. The homestead exemption, appraisal cap, protests, and any MUD, PID, or special districts all sit at the parcel level.
Official routes
Use the office for the parcel address; a mailing city is not always the governing city.
County context
What to know around Sour Lake
County lines carry much of the property, land, water, and outdoors context around Sour Lake.
County History
Kountze became the county seat by a close vote after a courthouse fire
Kountze is the county seat of Hardin County, a title it won only after losing the first vote by eleven ballots and winning a rematch after the original courthouse burned.
Property Tax
Hardin County has two separate property tax offices
One office sets your property value and another collects the tax. They are not the same office, and you deal with each one for different things.
Oil History
The 1903 Batson oil discovery helped launch the Texas Gulf Coast oil industry
The Batson-Old oilfield, discovered in southwestern Hardin County in 1903, was one of the fields that established Southeast Texas as the birthplace of the modern Texas oil industry.
Nearby
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