Haughton: A Name Swap on the Railroad

Local history says Haughton in Bossier Parish got its name through a small bureaucratic tangle in the eighteen eighties. The community had grown up around two pioneering families: the Haughtons, who settled here in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the Lawrences, who followed nearby. The railroad station was called Lawrence Station, after the Lawrences.

But there was already a Lawrence Station in Mississippi on the same rail line, and the confusion was causing problems. When the Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific Railroad had to rename the stop, a Lawrence family member who was also a Haughton son-in-law is said to have settled it: the station and the community would become Haughton. A Lawrence gave the town a Haughton name, and that compromise has stuck ever since.