Stoner Hill was devastated by 1912 tornado

Yahoo

26-01-2025

The Caddo Parish Civil Rights Heritage Trail project is expanding its scope with a new series designed to help historic villages, towns, neighborhoods, and/or cities in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, investigate three different versions of their communities: the past, the present, and the future. Team members include Dr. Gary Joiner, Mik Barnes, Jaclyn Tripp, Dr. Laura Meiki, Dr. Jolivette Anderson-Douong, Dr. Amy Rosner, Dr. Rolonda Teal, and Brenton Metzler.
This month's focus is the Stoner Hill neighborhood.
In Stoner Hill's origin story may surprise you, Dr. Gary Joiner (Professor of History at LSU Shreveport) taught us that Stoner Hill is older than the city of Shreveport. In part II of our series on Stoner Hill, Was Stoner Hill in Shreveport named after cannabis lovers, we learned where Stoner Hill got its name and how it connected to America's Civil War. Part III of the Stoner Hill series showed what Stoner Hill was like in 1935 vs. what Stoner Hill is like today.
Part IV of our series examines the history of a tornado that destroyed much of Stoner Hill in 1912.
Jaclyn Tripp took the lead on this article.
SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – A tornado that swept through Shreveport in 1912 killed ten people, injured more than fifty, and destroyed most of the homes in several communities–including Freewater Hill, which is now known as the Stoner Hill neighborhood.
After the tornado struck on Feb. 20, 1912, no homes were left standing in the Adner community on the Louisiana and Arkansas Road. Bowman Lane in Forest Hill and the Fairfield subdivision were hit particularly hard by the tornado, as was Freewater Hill's Bremmer Lane.
The tornado appeared out of the Southwest around 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 20, 1912. The Caucasian later called the tornado 'the most destructive in the history of storm disasters in Shreveport.'
After the tornado passed through the Centenary neighborhood, it hit Freewater Hill. Between 75 and 100 homes were completely demolished, and the devastation was so severe it was almost impossible to search through the debris and find where the homes had originally been located.
After destroying Freewater Hill, the tornado crossed the Red River into Bossier City.
'It seemed that the greatest damage was in the (African American community of Freewater Hill.) Shacks were taken up and hurled into the air and those who saw the storm say that flying timbers could be seen on all sides,' The (Shreveport) Times reported on Feb. 22, 1912.
Reports from within the community stated that people at Freewater Hill had to throw themselves into trenches and gutters to escape the tornado.
The Ambulance Corps of the Louisiana State National Guard erected dozens of tents, including three regulation hospital tents, for the homeless and the injured. The tents were set up on the east end of Olive Street at Freewater Hill.
Four stores and the Hopewell Church in the Freewater / Stoner Hill community were utterly destroyed. The stores were owned by African American business owners Mack and Ama Miles, Louis Parker, and Arthur Hawkins.
Police, firemen, and physicians entered the area as soon as possible after the storm, and a search for the dead and injured began. One of the first things the Mayor of Shreveport did after the tornado was to arrange for a wagon of groceries to be taken to Freewater Hill.
Donations poured in from across the city. The Captain of the No. 5 fire station began collecting clothes and taking them to city hall, which served as the hub for distributing goods to storm victims.
Eight houses were destroyed on Linwood and Fairfield Avenues, and two houses and a dairy barn on Herndon Place. The tornado also struck the Corbett place.
In Freewater, Mr. and Mrs. James Cook and Mrs. R. L. Stephens, who was holding a baby, narrowly escaped the tornado. Their homes were not as lucky.
'In the years gone there have been experiences storms which were more or less severe, when great trees were rooted bodily, when fences were leveled and houses of slim structure were otherthrown,' wrote a reporter for The Caucasian on Feb. 22. '…but, excepting the disaster experienced at Gilliam, the aggregate in the loss of life, of the number injured and of property destroyed on Tuesday afternoon is without a parallel in this section of the State.'
Sources:
The Caucasian, Feb. 22, 1912
The Shreveport Journal, Feb. 21, 1912, pp. 2
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