A History of Navigation on Cypress Bayou and the Lakes 
examines water transportation and the natural and 
socioeconomic factors that affected it in Northwest 
Louisiana, East Texas, and the Red River. Jacques Bagur 
explains how the natural logjam called The Great Raft, a 
unique phenomenon on the Red River, formed a continuous 
waterbody west of Shreveport. In the 1800s, enterprising 
steamboat captains traveled east on the route - known as 
Cypress Bayou and the Lakes - and developed a system of 
ports and landings. Jefferson became the most important of 
these, tapping market areas to the north, south, and far 
to the west.

   
Bagur has analyzed old Corps reports, historic maps, early 
travel accounts, and period newspapers to reveal the story 
of the area from 1800 to the present. Farmers and ranchers 
from as far as Dallas loaded goods onto Jefferson 
steamboats bound for Shreveport and New Orleans. Despite 
an expansion in commerce after the war, the steamboat's 
heyday on Cypress Bayou was over by 1880, seemingly 
because of the 1873 removal of the Great Raft by E. A. 
Woodruff and the Corps of Engineers. Bagur's research, 
however, confirms that the ports and landings fell victim 
to the same source that helped extinguish many early 
settlements: the railroad. Today, a dam prevents boats 
from traveling between Shreveport and Jefferson, yet this 
remarkable waterbody still offers much to contemporary 
watercraft.


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JACQUES D. BAGUR is a professional researcher living in 
Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He has spent the past twenty-seven 
years in applied research in various public policy areas, 
including programs for the Corps of Engineers.