Best hidden dry lakes are located around Shreveport

I was told there used to be a lake on the Centenary College campus. Is that possible? Where could it possibly have been? The campus is so hilly.

Yes. There was a lake on the Centenary campus, and there were several others scattered around Shreveport. The lake on the campus was located where the Gold Dome is today, and the low flat areas to the east and west were part of it as well. It was called Gladstone Lake. There was even a postcard made of it in the early 1900s. The area around it was made of cotton plantations since the mid-1800s. This lake was what is referred to as a “raft remnant.” This means that is created by the backflow of water from the Red River and its associated streams when the Great Raft clogged the river. When Henry Miller Shreve in the 1830s and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the 1870s, removed the raft, most of the water drained out from these lakes and streams and went back into the Red River. Some of the channels dried up or became swampy sloughs.

If the lakes dried up completely, they became perfect areas for growing cotton. Even after the Civil War, cotton was the major cash crop in this region. Other lakes became mere shadows of their former size. With a little observational skill, you can find most of these former lakes and the streams that created them.

Some of the best hidden dry lakes are located by roadways. Most of these have names, but not all. Betty Virginia Park, between Line Avenue and Fairfield Avenue was, in 1820, Deer Lake. If you drive south of the lake on Trabue, you will see a notch in the bluff at the north end of Thornhill. That is the wagon road down to the steamboat landing located behind the Boy Scout hut. How did water get into the lake? Follow the concrete ditches east and you will find that they connect to the big concrete ditch between Fern Avenue and Gilbert Avenue. That is Bayou Pierre, which was once the main channel of the Red River when the current channel was choked with logs.

Another large lake was Silver Lake, which lies under Interstate 20. The Ogilvie Hardware apartments are built on the floor of this lake. It was quite large. During the 1870s it extended across the river to the casinos. Lake Street in downtown Shreveport was located on Silver Lake when the roads were created.

A small lake hiding in plain sight is located at Columbia Park. If you notice while driving east toward Creswell Elementary School, you will note that the bed is clearly visible and a small stream runs away to the southeast.

The Duck Pond is actually part of the channel of the Red River before Henry Shreve cut it off. The land on the east side of the Duck Pond is called Shreve Island for obvious reasons. If you drive east on Preston and cross the Duck Pond, you will see a long street that heads south. Captain Shreve Drive looks different from all the streets near it. Today that area is almost completely taken up by a subdivision, but in the 1830s, it was a long thin lake in the middle of a kidney bean-shaped peninsula. Floods created the lake and supplied it with water. If you drive along Captain Shreve Drive, you will note that it is lower than the yards on either side. That is the centerline of the lake. These are but a few of our links to a watery past.

Dr. Gary Joiner is the Leonard and Mary Anne Selber Professor of History at LSUS, where he is also director of the Red River Regional Studies Center. Questions for “The History Doctor” may be addressed to editor@theforumnews.com.