Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Shreveport

SHREVEPORT, a city of the United States, capital of Caddo parish, Louisiana, on the west bank of Red River and near to Sodo Lake, is the eastern terminus of the Texas Pacific Railroad, 327 miles by rail north-west of New Orleans, with which it has regular steamboat communication. Situated in the heart of a very fruitful cotton-growing region, it is one of the principal cotton-markets in the south-west of the United States, and is the second commercial city in the State. It exports annually about 125,000 bales of cotton, and carries on a trade likewise in hides, wool, and tallow. It has factories for carriages, cotton gins, cotton-seed oil, soap, ice, sashes and blinds, and spokes and hubs, also foundries, machine-shops, a planing mill, saw-mills, and breweries. The town possesses among public buildings a handsome court-house and a cotton exchange. Red River is spanned by an iron bridge 20 feet wide and 1200 long. Shreveport, which was incorporated in 1839, had a population of 4607 in 1870 and of 8009 in 1880; in 1886 the population was estimated at 15,000.