“To wind through the small Northwest Louisiana towns between Caddo Lake and the Red River is to follow a map of phantoms: hills that are actually tombs, tufts of cotton snagged in the branches of trees; abandoned pumpjacks, rusted and shrouded by a forest struggling to reclaim itself, nodding towards eternity. Echoes of more prosperous ages rise from Greek columns—some of it perfectly preserved, much of it not—surrounded on all sides by the disheveled and rusty ruins from when the wells ran dry. The stories, half-told, are layered one over another: America, the gateway to the West, Manifest Destiny, the lumber baron, the cotton baron, and all the men and women who labored beneath them; black gold, pouring from the ground, until they didn’t call it gold anymore.
“Boom or Bust” they’ve named this scenic byway, a tourism-forward storytelling mechanism to connect the threads, to slow you down on the drive so you might actually see them.
When exploring the Caddo corner of the National Scenic Boom or Bust Byway, you could certainly make Shreveport your homebase—an urban reprieve rich in the amenities of a major Southern city. But a better immersion is perhaps a quieter one. I found myself about fifteen minutes north of the city proper, at God’s Country RV Resort inside the Soda Lake Wildlife Management Area, where, as they say, “Louisiana touches a bit of Heaven.””
Read the rest of the article in Country Roads Magazine.
You can take the same trip here.