Bossier City: Named for a Congressman, Built on the Red River
Near Shreveport, Louisiana
Bossier City grew up on the west bank of the Red River, directly across from Shreveport. The parish it sits in was carved from Natchitoches territory in eighteen forty-three and named for Pierre Evariste Jean-Baptiste Bossier, a local cotton planter who served as both a state senator and a United States congressman before his death in eighteen forty-four. The townsite itself was platted on October fifth, eighteen eighty-three, when J.
J. and Anna Stockwell began selling lots on their land. The village was incorporated around nineteen oh seven and was later classified as a town and then a city.
The construction of Barksdale Air Force Base in the nineteen thirties transformed Bossier City from a quiet river crossing into a major military hub, and it remains one of the fastest-growing cities in Louisiana.
