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History of Caddo Parish
One of the sixty-four parishes of Louisiana, Caddo Parish was formed in
1838. A parish is the same as a county in any other state, as Louisiana is
the only state to have parishes. Early on, however, Louisiana was divided
into counties.
In 1804 President Thomas Jefferson
appointed William C. C. Claiborne as governor of the Territory of Orleans,
as Louisiana was known in its first years. On April 10, 1805, Louisiana
was divided into twelve counties. The largest, Natchitoches County,
included all of Louisiana north of Rapides County and west of Washita
(Ouachita) County.1 To
better understand the vastness of this area, nine parishes were
subsequently formed from this area: Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Claiborne,
DeSoto, Natchitoches, Red River, Sabine, and Webster.
The legislature
soon established nineteen parishes to coexist with the counties.2
In 1812, when Louisiana became a state, North Louisiana included
Natchitoches, Ouachita, Warren, Catahoula, Concordia, and Rapides
Counties.3 People were
heading north and west into Texas from Louisiana, and enough of a
population existed in Natchitoches County to create Claiborne Parish,
named for the governor, in 1828. This parish consisted of all the land
east of the Red River in northern Natchitoches County.4
In 1835 the Caddo Indians ceded their land to the United States, and the
area was opened up for settlement. Within three years the area had enough
people to create another parish. Thus, Caddo Parish was created on January
18, 1838. The name, suggested by legislation member W. H. Sparke, refers
to the Caddo Indians.5
Caddo’s first parish seat was at the Wallace family home situated along
Wallace Lake, but it eventually moved to Shreveport.6
The boundaries of the new parish were not set until 1841.7
Originally Caddo Parish was framed by the Arkansas line at the north and
the Red River at the east, but it extended farther south than it does
today. The western boundary was the line dividing the established United
States from the territory which had been part of the Louisiana Purchase.
The line was accepted by settlers in the area, but in 1841 a survey of the
border was made and determined to be seven miles east of the generally
accepted line; therefore, Louisiana lost a stretch of land seven miles
wide and about seventy miles long. (This area is now part of Harrison,
Marion, Cass, and Bowie Counties in Texas).8
In 1843 DeSoto and Sabine Parishes were created and took land from the
southern part of Caddo Parish. In 1845 the state created a new
constitution which was based solely on the parish system, and the counties
evaporated.9
In 1845 the state of the parish’s western boundary was altered when Texas
was annexed to the Union. No longer would the western boundary be an
international boundary. But that has not been the only boundary change.
The course of the Red River, the eastern boundary, has changed often,
although the river as a boundary has not. Several sections of land east of
the river, which appear to be in Bossier Parish, actually belong to Caddo
Parish, and the opposite is true for Bossier Parish. Settlers bought the land in Northwest
Louisiana from the government and established plantations, primarily
growing cotton, which was the staple crop of the South. By 1860 Caddo
Parish was leading in cotton production in the state with Carroll Parish
(which had not yet divided into East and West Carroll Parishes) following
closely behind. 11
With the onslaught of the
Civil War,
military activity accelerated from June until December of 1861 with some
of the parishes surpassing their required number of soldiers. The parishes
in the river areas of North Louisiana, such as Caddo, Carroll, Bossier,
and Ouachita had pulled together several companies, and these parishes
subsequently increased their war efforts with more military units, such as
the Caddo Rifles in North Louisiana. 12
In 1873 the state was still suffering
greatly from the harshness of the Reconstruction government. Caddo,
Bossier, and DeSoto Parishes found the situation intolerable and attempted
to break away from Louisiana to join Texas. For this to happen,
Louisiana’s legislature would have had to approve, and the carpetbaggers
serving as members would not allow it. 13
Sawmills came to the area because of the
timber, and steamboats and
railroads transported the lumber to the
Northeast factories. Cotton and timber served as the greatest economic
resources until the turn-of-the-century; however, farmers in Caddo Parish
were frustrated. Drilling water wells for their livestock or for drinking
water for themselves proved useless, as their water continuously came out
sour. Some began to wonder if
natural gas could be causing the problem.
In
1901 oil was discovered near Beaumont, Texas at Spindletop and at Jennings
and at White Castle, Louisiana. Four years later in May, five barrels of
oil were produced in the Caddo-Pine Island Field. By 1911 the Gulf
Refining Company had successfully drilled oil on
Caddo Lake; this was the
first off-shore drilling in the nation. The 1930’s saw another oil boom as
people began to flock to Rodessa.14
References
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