1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Shreveport

SHREVEPORT, a city and the capital of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, U.S.A., on the Red river, in the N.W. part of the state, near the Texas border. Pop. (1890) 11,979; (1900) 16,013, of whom 8532 were negroes; (1910, census) 28,015. It is the second city of the state in population. It is served by the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific, the Houston & Shreveport, the Kansas City Southern, the St Louis & South-Western, the Louisiana Railway & Navigation Company, the Texas & Pacific (main line and two branches), the Louisiana & Arkansas, the Kansas City Southern, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways and by boats on the Red river. In the city are the State Charity Hospital (1872), the T. E. Schumpert Memorial Hospital (1910), the Genevieve Orphanage (1899) and the Shreveport Training School (1908). Owing to its situation and excellent transportation facilities the city has a large trade. The surrounding country is a rich agricultural region, mainly devoted to the production of cotton, for which Shreveport is the principal shipping point. Live-stock and cattle products are trade items of importance. The situation of the city (about 170 m. east of Dallas, and somewhat farther from Little Rock, Houston, and New Orleans) makes it a natural centre of wholesale trade of varied character, and the development since 1906 of the important Caddo oil and gas fields north of the city has added greatly to its industrial prominence. The city contains planing mills, cotton gins, compresses and cotton-seed oil mills, machine and railway shops, and ice and molasses factories. In 1905 its factory product was valued at $2,921,923 (87.8% more than in 1900). Shreveport was settled about 1835, incorporated as a town in 1839, and chartered as a city in 1871. It was named in honour of Henry Miller Shreve (1785-1854), a native of New Jersey, who in 1815 ascended the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers to Louisville in the “Enterprise,” the first steam vessel to make this trip, introduced improvements in the steamboat, and in 1826-1841 had charge of the improvement of western rivers, removing during this period the great Red river raft. After the capture of Baton Rouge, the state capital, and New Orleans by the Unionists in 1862, Shreveport was occupied by the Confederate officials of the state. In the spring of 1863 and again in that of 1864 it was the objective of combined naval and land expeditions made by the Union forces up the Red river under command of Admiral David D. Porter and General N. P. Banks, the Confederate commander in Louisiana being General Richard Taylor, with General E. Kirby Smith in charge of the entire trans-Mississippi department. In 1863 Shreveport was not seriously threatened. In 1864 when the Federals were within two marches of the city they were worsted by Taylor at Mansfield (on the 8th of April); on the next day the Confederates in their turn met with a demoralizing repulse at Pleasant Hill.