Where We
Practice Law: The History of Shreveport
Shreveport, Louisiana, was founded in 1836 by the Shreve Town
Company, a corporation established to develop a town at the
juncture of the newly navigable Red River and the Texas Trail,
an overland route into the newly independent Republic of Texas
and, prior to that time, into Mexico.The Red River
had been cleared by Captain Henry Miller Shreve, commanding the
US Army Corps of Engineers, of the 180 mile long raft of debris
that had clogged its channel since time immemorial. In Shreve's
honor the Shreve Town Company and the village of Shreve Town
were named. On March 20, 1839 the village of Shreve Town was
incorporated as the town of Shreveport. In 1871 Shreveport was
incorporated as a city.
Shreveport's
original boundaries were contained within a parcel of land sold
to the Shreve Town Company by the indigenous Caddo Indians in
1835. In 1838 Caddo Parish (county) was carved out of
Natchitoches Parish and Shreve Town became the parish seat;
Shreveport remains the parish seat of Caddo Parish, Louisiana
today.
The original
townsite consisted of sixty-four city blocks divided by eight
streets running west from the Red River and eight streets
running south from Cross Bayou, a tributary of the red River.
Today this sixty-four block area is the city's central business
district and is a National Register of Historic Places-listed
district.
Shreveport, and
its smaller sister city, Bossier City (founded in 1884 and
incorporated in 1907) together have six historic districts and
many landmarks listed on the National Register. In fact,
Shreveport is second only to New Orleans among Louisiana cities
with multiple historic landmarks. One of these is the McNeill
Street Pumping Station, an 1887 waterworks that is still in use
and is the unique example of its type in the nation. It is
listed on the National Historic Landmarks list, the highest
level of national historical designation. Also located in metro
Shreveport is Barksdale Air Force Base, opened in 1933 as
Barksdale Army Air Field. It is also a national landmark.
The Red River,
opened by Shreve in the 1830s, remained navigable until 1914
when disuse, owing to the rise of the railroad as the preferred
means of transporting goods and people, allowed it to begin
silting up. Not until the 1990s was navigation of the river
again possible to Shreveport. Today the port of
Shreveport-Bossier City is being developed once again as a
shipping center.
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