Shreveport Audioguides

Shreveport was born in 1836 at the junction of the Red River and the Texas Trail, after Captain Henry Shreve spent two years removing a 180-mile natural log jam called the Great Raft that had blocked the river for centuries. The city that grew from that clearing became Louisiana's capital during the Civil War, from 1863 to 1865, when the Confederacy used it as a command center for the Trans-Mississippi theater. Holy Trinity Catholic Church on Marshall Street, founded in 1858, and St. Mark's Cathedral on Caddo Street, established the following year, both predate the war and survive as architectural anchors in the older part of the city.

The Louisiana Hayride was a country music radio program that broadcast from the Shreveport Municipal Memorial Auditorium starting in 1948.

It launched Hank Williams's career, gave a young Elvis Presley his first national exposure in 1954, and ran for a decade as the primary rival to Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. The Auditorium, built in 1929 as a Beaux-Arts civic monument, still hosts concerts and events. The program's legacy is part of why the city calls itself the home of American music, though not everyone in Nashville would agree.