Mysterious Disappearance of Barksdale General and Airmen Still Unsolved

Throughout history there have been many intriguing and mysterious disappearances that remain unsolved such as the Lost Colony of Roanoke, the crew of the Mary Celeste, Amelia Earhart, and the men of Flight 19. One such disappearance has ties to Barksdale Air Force Base, and, although not as well-known as these more famous cases, it nonetheless is still mystifying 74 years after it happened.

In early 1951, the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) established the 7th Air Division and assigned it to England to help counter the growing threat from the Soviet Union. SAC bombers sta... Read Full Blog

Holiday Viands (Good Food!) in Old Bossier

During the holiday season in Bossier Parish, delicious food is always on the menu. From the parish formation in 1843 to today, treasured recipes are the backbone of family gatherings and community events. Newspaper articles from the 19th century are full of words and delicacies we might not recognize now, but the celebratory spirit and impulse to gather with special friends and family and favorite foods remain.

 

Rupert Peyton, newspaperman and a recorder of Bossier Parish history, was born in 1899 in Webster Parish and grew up as a child and young man on a farm in the Plai... Read Full Blog

Still Waters: The Freezing of a River and its Lasting Impact

The waters of the Red River, normally free flowing, came to a halt in December 1983, and 41 years later, this event is still a source of wonder and awe. Few times in local history have cold temperatures made their presence known on such a grand scale or created such a stunning display.

As residents prepared for Christmas in ’83, the weather gave no hint of what was to come. According to author and National Weather Service observer Billy Andrews, conditions were nothing out of the ordinary. “The first ten days of the month were typical of December weather ... ranging from above to ... Read Full Blog

80 Years Hence: The Railsplitters in the Battle of the Bulge

It was six months since the start of the Normandy Invasion on June 6, 1944, and four months since the Liberation of Paris. The advance had not slowed, with the German Army ceding more ground as the year progressed. Then came December, with winter setting-in for France, and an exhausted Allied army unprepared for the coming storm. Having marshalled its remaining available strength at the behest of Hitler’s mania, Germany launched their last-ditch gamble through the Ardennes Forest on December 16. Their hope was to cut the Allied Offensive in two. What instead occurred is considered one of th... Read Full Blog

Thanksgiving, 1944

Imagine it’s Thanksgiving, eighty years ago. It’s 1944 and World War II had been widely predicted from authoritative sources to be over by Thanksgiving, certainly in Europe. Instead, American troops were in a full-scale attack on the German western bulwark, the Siegfried Line. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest, actually a series of battles fought from September 19 to December 16, 1944, the second longest battle the U.S. Army had ever fought, was being conducted largely on foot due to challenging weather and a terrain of dense forests and muddy ridges. Making sure these and other troops got a rea... Read Full Blog

First People of the Red River

 Looking straight at me and my coworker Sarah-Elizabeth Gundlach, Ms. LaRue Parker, the tribal chair of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, asked us how we would feel if someone dug up our grandmother’s grave, taking the bones and the jewelry and all that was buried with her. “Violated,” answered Sarah-Elizabeth. “Outraged,” I said. “Yes,” Ms. Parker said, with the tribal council members seated around her nodding in agreement, “That’s how we feel when it happens to us.”

National Native American Heritage Month is commemorated each year in November to celebrate the traditions, languages,... Read Full Blog

Football Team Finds Victory in Crash Landing at Barksdale

Sixty-one years ago, a football team and three coaches from a small Texas school made an unscheduled stop at Barksdale Air Force Base, providing them a victory greater than any experienced on the field.    

McMurry College in Abilene, Texas had one win and one loss early in the 1963 football season, and next on its schedule was Northeast Louisiana State College, now University of Louisiana Monroe. The game would be played in Monroe, so McMurry flew-in for the matchup on Saturday, September 28. 

Defense from both teams dominated play that evening until McMurry... Read Full Blog

Daisy “Dell” Sutherlin Jones: Delta Wings and Haughton Roots

November is Aviation History Month, and here in the History Center, we’re always looking for stories from World War II. But if “aviation history” and World War II invokes images of fighter planes, bombers and their pilots, here is another image to add: Domestic planes being used in the war effort, with women as part of their crews.

 

In 1943, Daisy Dell Sutherlin (later Jones), a young woman from Haughton, became an early “stewardess,” now known as flight attendant, for the North Louisiana-grown Delta Airlines. It was a brand-new career opening up... Read Full Blog

Representative Pierre Bossier: A Farewell to the First from the Fourth

Representative Pierre Bossier: A Farewell to the First from the Fourth

Here is  another story of our parish’s namesake, General Pierre Evariste Jean Baptiste Bossier.  Our last jaunt into the past with General Bossier (8/28/2024), the story ended with his fabled death in 1844. With the Day of the Dead just around the corner, this story takes up from there. 

 

In 1842, General Pierre Evariste Bossier, a Jacksonian Democrat of Natchitoches, became the first legislator elected to represent Louisiana’s brand-new Fourth Congressional District. He began ... Read Full Blog

Family History Month: “Generation to Generation”

In a house which becomes a home, one hands down and another takes up the heritage of mind and heart, laughter and tears, musings and deeds. Love, like a carefully loaded ship, crosses the gulf between the generations….So begins one of my favorite poems, “Generation to Generation” by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (best known for “the Little Prince”). I’m sharing it here because October is Family History Month.

Family History Month is celebrated and promoted to ensure that family stories are remembered for decades (and centuries) to come through research and education. It w... Read Full Blog

School Tragedy in East Texas Prompts Response from Bossier Parish

Among the many headstones at Forest Park Cemetery in Shreveport, there stands one with the name of a young girl who perished 87 years ago in the worst school disaster in our nation’s history. Mary Priscilla Carney was only 12 that fateful afternoon in 1937 when an explosion reduced her school in New London, Texas to rubble. Bossier Parish responded, as did many communities, and began taking steps to ensure such a tragedy wouldn’t happen here.

Revenue flowing from the East Texas oil fields brought much-needed prosperity to New London in the 1930s. Located approximately 1... Read Full Blog

Old Friends on Old Downtown Bossier

Old Friends on Old Downtown Bossier

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I beg to differ. At least among old friends discussing a photograph in our History Center collection of old downtown Bossier City (Barksdale Blvd.) circa 1952, it is worth 6,173 words. At least, the photo elicited that many words in the transcribed oral history interview, recorded in 2011 at the History Center with friends Samuel “Aaron” Kelly and Larry Moore. Both men were born in the mid-1930s and were lifelong Bossier residents. (They also passed away within months of each other in 2017 and 2018.)Read Full Blog

Reading and Roller Coasters, Log Rides and Library Cards

September is Library Card Sign-up Month. As Bossier Parish Community Engagement Librarian Andrea Gilmer wrote in her column last week (9/4/24) the campaign began as a challenge laid down by then-Secretary of Education William H. Bennet to members of the American Library Association in 1987. The challenge, that the librarians chose to accept, was to see that every child obtains a library card, and every child uses it. Just two years later, the librarians of Caddo and Bossier Parishes had come up with a nearly foolproof plan to reach that goal right here in northwest Louisiana. That was becau... Read Full Blog

Celebration Highlights Bossier’s Emergence as a City

Seventy-three years ago this month was a special time for Bossier City. It was a time for celebrating, a time for congratulations, and a time for recognition, not because of a great sports victory or a win on the political stage or the opening of some new, grand industry. It was special due to the achievement of a long hoped-for milestone, Bossier taking a seat at the adult table. In 1951, Bossier became a city.

 

 

Plans were announced to mark the auspicious occasion. Newspapers of the day heralded the event with headlines proclaiming “A C... Read Full Blog

Bossier Biography: Lettie van Landingham

Have you ever had questions about gardening, landscaping, pressure cooking, furniture refinishing, public health, floral design, nutrition, infant care, historic preservation, city cleanup, sewing, personal hygiene, or food preservation? Would you believe that for 30 years Bossier Parish had one woman who could provide you with answers to questions on this wide variety of subjects? That woman was Lettie van Landingham. She described her work as “doing everything you can’t get the other fellow to do.”

 

 

Lettie was born in Claiborne Parish ... Read Full Blog