Custom Home Builder
on Lake Texoma

Ninety-three thousand acres of water, straddling the Texas-Oklahoma border, surrounded by terrain that demands architecture designed for the specific piece of ground it occupies. Ceci Bates has been building custom homes on Lake Texoma for more than twenty-six years — on steep limestone bluffs, in wooded coves, along sandy Oklahoma shoreline, and on elevated lots where the view opens across the entire western reach of the lake.

Understanding
Lake Texoma

Lake Texoma is one of the largest reservoirs in the United States — formed where an earthen dam holds back the Red River at the Texas-Oklahoma border. The lake covers approximately ninety-three thousand acres, with over five hundred miles of shoreline winding through coves, bluffs, and stretches of open water. Despite its name, most of the lake’s surface area is actually in Oklahoma, where the flooding of the Red River valley extended further north across the flatter terrain.

On the Texas side, the shoreline rises steeply — wooded limestone bluffs, narrow coves tucked into the trees, and elevations where the view opens across the full western reach of the water. On the Oklahoma side, particularly around Kingston, the terrain opens wider — sandy banks, broader beaches, more sky above the water, and a gentler approach to the shoreline that draws a different kind of home to its edge.

What makes Lake Texoma distinctive for custom home building is the creative freedom the lakefront lots provide. Unlike many planned communities, most lake lots carry fewer subdivision restrictions — the architecture can respond purely to the site and the owner’s vision rather than conforming to a predetermined neighborhood standard. A cliff-side position shapes the foundation. A stand of oaks determines where the windows open. The angle of the water drives the orientation of every room that faces it. There is no template for a lake home on Texoma because there are no two lots alike.

This freedom attracts a specific kind of owner — someone who values the opportunity to build exactly what they envision on land that demands a thoughtful, site-specific response. The homes we build on Lake Texoma are, in many ways, the most architecturally creative work in our portfolio — because the lake demands it.

How a Lakefront
Home Begins

Every lakefront project begins the same way: the architect visits the property, flies a drone to document the views at different elevations, and maps the site — where the water is visible, where the premium views are, where the sun rises and sets across seasons, where the terrain falls, and which trees define the property’s character. For lake lots, this analysis is especially critical because the relationship between the home and the water is the primary reason the owner chose the lot.

A north-facing view of the lake may allow floor-to-ceiling glass with no shading needed. A west-facing sunset view may require architectural elements that block summer heat while preserving the evening light. These decisions are not aesthetic preferences — they are engineering responses to the specific physics of the lot.

Lake lots on the Texas side frequently require structural solutions beyond standard residential construction. We have built homes anchored into limestone cliffs with drilled pier foundations. We have engineered basements on steep slopes where the lower level opens to the lake while the main floor enters from the road above. Every one of these solutions is engineered in advance, modeled in 3D, and load-calculated before construction begins.

The homes we build on the lake share one quality regardless of their size, style, or position on the shoreline: they are designed for gathering. The living spaces open to the water. The porch extends the home outdoors. The guest rooms feel considered, not incidental. Nearly every owner who builds on Lake Texoma is thinking about the same thing: how to make this the place where the people they care about want to come back to.

Life on Lake Texoma

The lake draws people for different reasons. Some come for the water itself — boating, sailing, fishing for striped bass in one of the most productive fisheries in the region. Highport Marina, one of the largest inland marinas in the country, holds a thousand boats — including ocean-going yachts that run to sixty feet and beyond. The activity on the lake ranges from quiet kayak mornings to tournament fishing weekends to summer afternoons where every cove has a boat anchored in it.

Others come for what surrounds the lake. The terrain — the hills, the oaks, the quiet coves where you can stand on your own porch and hear nothing but the water — is closer to the Texas Hill Country than to the flat prairie most people associate with North Texas. Communities like Rock Creek, Fossil Ridge, and the developing areas around Lake Bois d’Arc each have their own character and their own draw. Pottsboro, where our office has been for twenty-six years, sits just south of the lake with the kind of walkable small-town rhythm that newcomers often say they had stopped believing still existed.

What unites the people who build here is a common orientation. They are not building a house to put on the market in five years. They are building a home designed around how they want to spend their time — on the water, on the porch, with the people they have invited to share it.

Building on the
Oklahoma Side

Kingston is the Oklahoma side of lake life. The same ninety-three thousand acres, the same water, the same reason people come — but the terrain presents it from a different angle. The shoreline is flatter here. The sky opens wider above the water. Where the Texas side rewards vertical architecture that steps down a bluff, the Oklahoma shore often allows for wider, single-story footprints that spread across the lot and open to the lake along their full length.

Some of our clients discover Kingston by accident. They come to look at the Texas side, cross the border, and find that the Oklahoma shore has the particular quality they were looking for — a little more space, a little more openness, and a view of the same lake from an angle they had not considered. We build in Kingston and the surrounding Oklahoma communities with the same process, the same team, and the same commitment we bring to every project on the Texas side.

Twenty-six years. Over a thousand homes.
Both sides of the lake. The same standard
of care.

Building on the Lake
Begins
with a Conversation

Whether you already own a lot on Lake Texoma or are still exploring the area, the first step is the same — a conversation about what you have in mind. We would welcome the opportunity to listen.

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