Greenwood, Louisiana
Near Shreveport, Louisiana
About fifteen miles west of Shreveport sits Greenwood, a town that nearly became the seat of Caddo Parish instead. The Caddo people had lived here for centuries before signing the Treaty of Cession of eighteen thirty-five and relocating to what is now Oklahoma. Caddo Parish was created three years later, in eighteen thirty-eight, named in their honor.
In eighteen thirty-nine, a group of investors formed the Greenwood Town Company, named for one of their partners, Samuel Greenwood, and began selling lots. When the vote came to pick a parish seat, Greenwood lost to Shreveport by a single vote. That one ballot kept Greenwood a quiet farming crossroads rather than a regional capital, and that is essentially what it remains today.
