A Lake Bistineau Fishing Story for National Hunting and Fishing Day

September 27 is National Hunting and Fishing Day, an event celebrated by all 50 states every year on the fourth Saturday in September. It was established in 1972 when Congress passed two bills to have a day to celebrate the conservation contributions of U.S. hunters and anglers. It seems a perfect time to share a fun fishing story (with some hunting thrown in, too) brought to me by a reader of this column, JoAnne McDonald.

Mrs. McDonald and her late husband Jerry had a house in Bossier Parish with a private pond near Lake Bistineau. It was highlighted in The Shrevepor... Read Full Blog

Combat Skyspot in SE Asia: The B-52s On-the-Ground Advantage

Operational since December of 1954, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber aircraft and its distinctive hulking silhouette are familiar, over 70 years Advantage, to anyone living near North Louisiana’s Barksdale Air Force Base. When the B-52 entered service, the Air Force’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) intended it for use in the “Cold War” to deter the expanding and modernizing military of the Soviet Union and its increasing nuclear capabilities. In the 1960s, projects to replace the B-52 with a new bomber had been aborted or scrapped after disappointing results. With the escalating situation in Sou... Read Full Blog

Name Change a Contentious Issue in Bossier City History

“What’s in a name? This question from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” might well have been asked concerning a name change for Bossier City. Beginning in the early 20th century, efforts surfaced to re-label Bossier City as East Shreveport. But how serious were those efforts, and could Bossier still retain its own identity if referred to as something else? Would Bossier, by any other name, still be Bossier?

When Bossier City, namesake of soldier and congressman General Pierre Bossier, was still officially a village, local maps from the early 1900s show a subdivision of the... Read Full Blog

Black Business Month: Blacksmithing in Koran

August is Black Business Month, founded as a time to acknowledge and uplift Black-owned businesses across the U.S., that have existed and persisted despite the obstacles historically put in front of them. Unfortunately, there are obstacles in researching black owned businesses, too. When searching the History Center’s own archives, and city directories and local newspapers readily available to us, such as the Shreveport Times and Journal, the Bossier Banner and the Plain Dealing Progress, there was little to find on early black businesses in Bossier Parish, when life and news sources were s... Read Full Blog

On the 80th Anniversary of the Atomic Bombing of Japan: A Story of Survivor Shoji Tabuchi

Shoji Tabuchi, who made Bossier City home for a decade in the 1970’s, was a young classically-trained violinist in Japan who set himself a goal to be a country music star in America when as a college student he heard Howdy Forrester, fiddler for Roy Acuff, on tour in Japan. Ultimately becoming the fiddler for Bossier’s homegrown country music star David Houston, who wowed audiences in his own right, and then in his own show and theatre in Branson, MO, Shoji attained that goal and then some. If you visited Branson, Missouri, the entertainment tourism-based city in the Ozarks, or know anyone ... Read Full Blog

“Invasion” Force Hits Bossier’s East Bank During World War II

The Bossier side of the Red River was the scene of a unique event 80 years ago. Soldiers dashed out of boats amid billowing smoke screens and hurried towards the east bank. Planes fired on enemy positions, as the clatter of machine guns echoed along the river, and medics tended the wounded. No, war hadn’t come to Bossier City. The fighting was simulated, meant to give spectators a glimpse of America’s fighting forces in action and encourage the support of those forces by the purchase of war bonds.

War bond drives, or war loan drives as they were also called, were a critical aspect... Read Full Blog

When History was in the Making in the History Center: A Hurricane Katrina Remembrance

It’s been twenty years, on August 29, since our neighbors on the Gulf Coast had to face the devastation of Hurricane Katrina (and soon after that, Hurricane Rita). Their lives were transformed, and for a while, life here at the Bossier Parish Library was transformed too. It never occurred to us the critical role a public library might play in disaster response, several hours away from the disaster, but we learned on our feet. Hundreds of evacuees poured into the Bossier Parish Central Library and History Center so they could use the computers to look at satellite photos of their homes, to t... Read Full Blog

Sears Had Long History in Bossier City

Walking through Pierre Bossier Mall, there is no indication that its east end was home to Sears. Gone is the Sears sign that once hung above the mall entrance to the store, that entrance now blocked by a security gate. Beyond the gate, darkness inhabits the space once filled with everything from clothing and homewares to appliances and tools. Sears’ ending stands in stark contrast to its beginning in Bossier City sixty-nine years ago.

A simple, straight-to-the-point headline appeared in the November 30, 1956 edition of the Bossier Press newspaper, “Sears Opens Bossier Sto... Read Full Blog

Bossier West of the Red

When looking at the bounds of Bossier Parish, one would be forgiven for believing that the western bank of the Red River was entirely Caddo Parish, and the eastern bank was entirely Bossier Parish. One would also be quite wrong. Several portions of the traditional Caddo Parish side of the river are in fact Bossier Parish, leading to several instances of disconnected parish land. The reason for all this is due to the language used on the founding of Bossier Parish, as well as physical geographical changes over the past 182 years.

When the borders of Bossier Parish were fir... Read Full Blog

Pearce O’Neal: Making it Big in the Big Easy

It happens often enough to be a cliché; small town papers love a good “local boy [or gal] makes good” story. The “Bossier Banner Progress” was no exception. The editor especially liked the story of his former schoolmate, William “Pearce” O’Neal. O’Neal was born in Bellevue and became an international business and banking leader in New Orleans. The “Banner Progress” featured him in two stories.

One story was in May of 1924 when the editor was perusing “The Southern Banker,” a periodical out of Atlanta, Georgia, an illustration of a familiar face and this accompanying text caught his at... Read Full Blog

Unusual Newspaper Headline Recalls UFO Sighting in Bossier

As I research various topics to write about for the History Center’s weekly column, I sometimes come across interesting, unexpected information from Bossier’s past that captures my attention. Such is the case with an old newspaper headline and story that I found recently concerning supposedly strange objects spotted over Barksdale Air Force Base. What were those lights seen in the night sky?

In June 1947, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold, who was flying alone from Washington state to an air show in Oregon, helped launch the UFO (unidentified flying object) craze after describing for repor... Read Full Blog

When Barksdale AFB helped to “Build a Better Bubble”

It’s now officially hurricane season. Here in northwest Louisiana, it’s also thunderstorm, tornado, and flash flood season. However, over the years we’ve been spared some catastrophic weather despite dire and urgent predictions. Major snowstorms that were predicted here this past winter had Louisianians as far south as New Orleans in real-life snow globe scenes, while up here we saw nary a snowflake. Other severe storms have bounded us in nearly all directions, while leaving us unscathed.

If you believe the local legends, we owe those unforeseen clear skies to “the Barksdale Bubble,” ... Read Full Blog

Task Force Smith - A Reminder of the Forgotten War

The year was 1950, and the world was recovering from the most destructive conflict to have ever occurred. The reconstruction of the world was ongoing, with two major power blocs dominating the international order: the American led Western Bloc and the Soviet led Eastern Bloc. In late June, the news came to the world: the Soviet aligned Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has crossed the dividing line into the American aligned Republic of Korea. The first war of the post-World War II world had come; the Korean War had begun. Often referred to as the Forgotten War here in the United States ... Read Full Blog

History Center Collection Highlights Wedding Fashions and Trends of the Past

June is such a popular month for marriages. Did you know that the month of June derives its name from Juno, the Roman goddess of marriage? Here is a look in the History Center’s collection to learn about the traditions and fashions of Bossier’s historic weddings.

There are many photographs of wedding parties and brides in our collection. Thomas P. Adger and Clyde Louise Herndon wed at the First Baptist Church in Plain Dealing on June 17, 1914. We have an entire series of candid photos from their wedding day taken by John Allen, including one of the young couple climbing into an automo... Read Full Blog

Barksdale Provided Training to Help Frenchmen Reclaim Homeland

Eighty-five years ago this month, France officially surrendered to the Germans following the Nazi invasion of the country in 1940. But while flags emblazoned with the Nazi swastika flew over Paris, there were those who vowed that Hitler’s forces would not long remain on French soil. And Barksdale Field, as the base was then known, helped keep that promise.

Beginning in May 1944, young Frenchmen started arriving at Barksdale to train as pilots, gunners, navigators, and bombardiers. They carried with them the hopes of a nation desperate to oust the invaders. In the coming weeks and mont... Read Full Blog