What’s old can be new again

As a historian, I’m frequently asked about various history topics. Of course, that’s my passion, and some of the most interesting things come from someone’s personal collection or family history. History stories are all around us if we just look.

A question could result from something friends or relatives have told them. Sometimes they ask things that I, as a history professor, have discussed multiple times in public forums. It’s clear to me that people get interested in history when they have a personal connection or when they have a random thought about something familiar but puzzling. Just this week, someone asked me why there is a dip in the Kroger parking lot at Bayou Walk. Answer: It’s where there was once a small tributary of the Red River when the Red River encompassed Sand Beach Bayou and Bayou Pierre. For me, that’s old information, but for someone with a question, it’s fresh, new and interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, someone at LSUS (not a professor or student) indicated she had been walking in Betty Virginia Park and wanted to know what the zigzag trail is above the Boy Scout hut. Answer: It’s a wagon road going down to Deer Lake, which is now the bottom of Betty Virginia Park.

While students were working on census research, I was asked to explain why there were so many people living in Cedar Grove who indicated they had been born in Belgium. Answer:

Those people came here as artisan workers, working in either a chimney glass factory or a glass casket factory. Yes, a casket, as in a burial casket. Around the 1920s, glass windows in caskets became popular, and some of them were manufactured in the Cedar Grove industrial park.

This summer, we’ve seen floods in Texas, and that leads us to think about the water all around us. I was once asked why the ditches in South Highlands are so deep and covered in concrete. Answer: It’s part of a well-engineered water system that usually has just a trickle of water, but it’s designed to handle more than that. Why? Over the years, the city and the state realized that there was a high probability of flooding in the new Broadmoor neighborhood and along the edges of South Highlands, which was established in the 1920s.

Shreveport is a city founded around water — not just because of the Red River but because of the many natural artesian springs that are hiding in plain sight — downtown, west of downtown, in Highland and in South Highlands. And we were a place surrounded by streams and lakes, making the area viable for commerce. The first observed commercial vessel operating on Bayou Pierre on its south end was a keel boat reported in 1797. Just a few years later, a government vessel went all the way from the Red River at Grand Ecore up to where Bayou Pierre leaves the Red River — at the intersection of Clyde Fant Parkway and Stoner Avenue.

Steamboats were still prevalent as late as 1900, when it was reported that people going to a firemen’s ball had the option of taking a wagon or a steamboat. (It was reported that the steamboat arrived at the destination much quicker than the wagons.) A steamboat could quickly take people from Bayou Pierre on the north end, crossing what is now Youree Drive to what we know as Shreve Island, southwest to today’s Querbes golf course, with stops along what we know as the Fern Avenue Extension, which has Sand Beach Bayou on one side and Bayou Pierre on the other. Sand Beach Bayou exited into Bayou Pierre just south of Flournoy Lucas Road. We were literally in a water environment, and the waterways were the highways because they were the thoroughfares of their day.

I hope you’ve found this column a teaser, giving you some interesting information while encouraging you to ask questions and share new information for review. Keep in mind that what you’ve heard all your life or what you’ve believed for years may or may not be true. It requires discussion and research to get to the truth.

Who knows? You may have a question or information that helps us take local history to the next level.

Don’t just think of history as “some old story.”

There is always something fresh to be discovered. It could come from an archaeological dig, from a discovery at a construction site or from a scrapbook you rescue from the junk heap. Remnants of the past are all around us, a rich tapestry with threads moving outward. Let’s keep that tapestry expanding and celebrate who and what we are and where we live. There is still much to be discovered. Look for it and respect it. I’m excited to answer your questions and to share history with you as we explore and learn together.

Dr. Gary Joiner is a Professor of History at LSU Shreveport, where he is the Director of Red River Regional Studies and the Strategy Alternatives Consortium. He can be contacted at Gary.Joiner@lsus.edu.