Cedar Grove's first residents, topography, and first streets

Yahoo

05-03-2025

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.
The team is now focusing on the history of the Cedar Grove neighborhood.
In the first article in the series on Cedar Grove, Dr. Gary Joiner (Professor of History at LSU Shreveport) showed us how a social movement in 1911 Shreveport drastically changed Cedar Grove.
In the second article of the series, we learned how Shreveport became a hub for automobile production in the early days of the horseless carriage.
The third article of the series examined how manufacturing changed in Cedar Grove after automobile production ended.
For the fourth article in our series on Cedar Grove, Dr. Gary Joiner took readers back to 1905-1910, when Cedar Grove sprung up in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, as a small oil boom town.
The fifth article on Cedar Grove explores how Cedar Grove was settled after the Louisiana Purchase, how streets became bisected in Cedar Grove, and describes the topography of the little community that later became a Shreveport community.
SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – The Cedar Grove neighborhood of Shreveport today is bordered by Southfield Road and Hollywood Avenue on the north, Line Avenue on the east, Linwood Avenue on the west, and 84th Street and 85th Street on the south. In modern Shreveport, Cedar Grove is bisected north and south by 70th Street and east and West by I-49.
But things haven't always been this way.
Cedar Grove was once an independent town with its own boundaries. It was also an economic powerhouse that eventually allied with Shreveport.
Did you know that several adjoining neighborhoods, including Eden Gardens, Oakmont, Woodlawn, Home Gardens, Morningside, and Shady Grove, owe their existence directly to Cedar Grove?
The oldest detailed map of the area that would become Cedar Grove is found in the Louisiana Office of State Lands records in Baton Rouge. This is a portion of the original Patent Survey Map of Township 17 North, Range 14 West. Cedar Grove occupies Sections 24 and 25.
The Cedar Grove township was surveyed in 1837, and the map was finalized in 1839. The boundary line between sections 24 and 25 is the original Pierremont Road track. The oldest land occupation is shown as a field owned by Weathersby.
Cedar Grove is generally flat or gently rolling terrain and is well drained. West of I-49 and north of 70th Street is mainly flat.
Original patents in Cedar Grove occurred in 1839, 1849, and 1859. Not all acreage was patented, and not all of the land patents went to the same individual.
A land patent is the first time a king or government offers land to a private individual or a business. The initial transaction is called separation from the sovereign, and after that, the transfer is called a deed.
William Laslay Pickens, a native of Livingston County, Kentucky, purchased 360 noncontiguous acres in sections 24 and 25 for $1.25 per acre. The land was prime geography for growing cotton.
One of William Pickens' sons, Israel, served as sheriff of Caddo Parish during the Civil War.
The Pickens family cemetery is located in Cedar Grove near 74th Street and St. Vincent Avenue. The oldest grave is William Pickens, who died at age 46, just three years after purchasing the property.
Several wealthy Shreveporters, some owners of early Cedar Grove industries, purchased most of the remaining Pickens land in 1910. Among them were former Louisiana governor Newton Crain Blanchard, real estate developer J.B. Atkins, Lee Emmett Thomas, Wesley E. Wheless, and John D. Wilkinson. Shreveport had friendly relations with Cedar Grove. The city extended street car service to its near neighbor, separated by five miles of mostly undeveloped land. While workers in Cedar Grove refineries and factories mostly lived there, owners and managers typically lived in Shreveport.
Eric Brock, writing about Cedar Grove in 1998, described the original street plans and how they morphed into the larger City of Shreveport grid:
'Cedar Grove's original plan was drawn up by Wheelock, Call, and Call, a Shreveport development corporation, though other developers followed and expanded Cedar Grove to its present size. It consisted of a grid of streets surrounding an area set aside for factories. The idea was that workers could live close to their jobs. Initially, 1,574 lots were laid out for homes. Five streets running north to south and 14 running east to West made up the first phase of development. Initially, the north/south streets were named Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio Avenues, but soon the names were changed: First, respectively, to Western, Atkins, Division, Southern (as it connected, via the streetcar line from Shreveport to the already extant Southern Avenue to the north), and Highland. After the annexation [in 1927], in order to avoid confusion with other Shreveport streets, the north-south streets of Cedar Grove were given their present names: Dowdell, St. Vincent (it was connected with the already extant St. Vincent Avenue to the north), Dillman, Southern, and Henderson, respectively. The east-west streets, first named A through N Streets, were later renamed 67th through 80th, respectively. The numbering followed a pattern begun when the development's limits were extended to the north. The idea was that 70th Street was 70 blocks south of Stoner Avenue and so forth. Actually, the numbering was miscalculated by several blocks – which is not surprising since a great deal of land between Cedar Grove and Shreveport then remained undeveloped. Today, Cedar Grove possesses streets numbered 58th through 85th.'
'Cedar Grove was first a town on its own' by Eric J. Brock, printing in Presence of the Past, Shreveport Journal, Feb. 21, 1998.
The railroad tracks initially divided east-west running streets in Cedar Grove into east and west names. (For example, East 70th Street and West 70th Street.) But as Shreveport grew to the West after 1927, extensions of existing streets received the West designation but were not necessarily connected to the original streets. That's why West Jordan Street does not connect to Jordan Street, etc.
Eric J. Brock, 'Currently A Standing Symbol of Urban Decay, Cedar Grove Was Once a Booming Industrial Town,' Presence of the Past, Shreveport Journal, March 19, 1994.
Eric J. Brock, 'Cedar Grove Was First a Town On Its Own,' Presence of the Past, Shreveport Journal, February 21, 1998.
Louisiana Oil and Gas Museum, Oil City, Louisiana. https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/louisiana-oil-and-gas-museum/
Eric J. Brock, 'Cedar Grove Was First a Town On Its Own,' Presence of the Past, Shreveport Journal, February 21, 1998.
[Louisiana Oil and Gas Museum, Oil City, Louisiana. https://aoghs.org/energy-education-resources/louisiana-oil-and-gas-museum/
The (Shreveport) Times, Aug. 25, 1897, pp. 8
The Shreveport Daily News, July 18, 1861, pp. 3
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