The Lifelines of the Nation

The United States Interstate Highway System, often shortened to just the Interstate or “I” is one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure in the United States, a fact I and many others are intimately familiar with. My commute spends twenty minutes on the interstate, and I know I’m not alone with this experience. With the interstates, what would otherwise be heavy traffic and constant stoplights is replaced with steady movement and high speeds. This and more are all thanks to the work put in nearly a century prior, in the wake of the Second World War.

The purpose of the U.S. Inte... Read Full Blog

The Lifelines of the Nation

The United States Interstate Highway System, often shortened to just the Interstate or “I” is one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure in the United States, a fact I and many others are intimately familiar with. My commute spends twenty minutes on the interstate, and I know I’m not alone with this experience. With the interstates, what would otherwise be heavy traffic and constant stoplights is replaced with steady movement and high speeds. This and more are all thanks to the work put in nearly a century prior, in the wake of the Second World War.

The purpose of the U.S. Inte... Read Full Blog

Secret Base at Barksdale Helped Safeguard U.S. Nuclear Arsenal

 In an episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” titled “Keeper of the Flame,” Andy’s elementary school-aged son Opie comes to his dad’s workplace to share news with his dad, but remains tight-lipped on details of that news. “You know what I did? I joined a club,” Opie says. “What club was that,” Andy asks. “I can’t tell ya,” Opie replies. “Know where we meet,” Opie continues. “No, where,” Andy asks. “I can’t tell ya,” comes the answer. Each attempt from Andy to learn more about the club is met with the same reply from Opie, “I can’t tell ya.”

Barksdale Air Force Base was once home to ... Read Full Blog

A Civil Rights History for National Blood Donor Month

Fifty-five years ago, on December 31, 1969, President Richard Nixon proclaimed the first National Blood Donor Month in January 1970 to honor voluntary blood donors and to encourage people to give blood. January 20th is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday established in 1983. The holiday has transformed a decade later to include a National Day of Service honoring Dr. King’s activism and service that paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both of these January commemorations are connected in significant and perhaps unexpected ways, especially if one goes back to the era of ... Read Full Blog

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