On March 20, 1839, the village of Shreve Town was incorporated as the town of Shreveport.

The Shreve Town Company established the community three years earlier, seeking 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.

The company, and hence the town, was named after Captain Henry Miller Shreve of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who during the 1830s oversaw the clearing of a 180-mile-long raft of debris that had clogged its channel for many years, according to an account by historian Eric Brock.

The original boundaries were contained within a parcel of land sold to the Shreve Town Company by the indigenous Caddo Indians in 1835. The original town site consisted of 64 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 64-block area is the city’s central business district and is a National Register of Historic Places-listed district.

In 1838, Caddo Parish was carved out of Natchitoches Parish, and Shreve Town became the parish seat. Shreveport was incorporated as a city in 1871.

As an aside, the Red River remained navigable until 1914 when disuse — as railroads became 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. 

Did you enjoy this history feature? It first appeared in Issue 1408 in www.LaPoliticsWeekly.com on March 21, 2024. Subscribe today to get history reporting delivered right to your inbox!