From Frog Level to Rodessa, Louisiana

A "postal route map" of Arkansas from 1879 shows Frog Level in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, which is now known as Rodessa. But how did that happen? (Arkansas Digital Archives).

I was browsing old maps at the Arkansas Digital Archive and this one stood out to me, because it mentions Frog Level in an 1879 postal route map of Arkansas and Indian Territory. Where's Frog Level, you ask? You may know it better as Rodessa, Caddo Parish, Louisiana, an oil boom town that went bust.

In 1890, a railroad was proposed to come through Frog Level, and an anonymous farmer from the area opposed it in an editorial written in the Alliance (Atlanta, TX). Most populists at the time were not keen on railroads, who rightfully understood that they'd force shipping monopolies on independent farmers. They also opposed the tax leveled onto their properties to entice track development.

In his letter about Frog Level's "no taxation without representation," the farmer identified himself as Tad Pole. 😀

His appeal was not successful. The railroad came through, and an extension to the new town of Rodessa (named after a railroad executive's daughter, ostensibly) in 1898 assisted in the loss of Frog Level in favor of Rodessa's boom.

And Rodessa became a real boom town, but from oil rather than the railroad. In the early 1900s, the "Caddo field," a large oil pool, was discovered beneath the pine trees and swamps of northwestern Louisiana (it extended into East Texas and Arkansas, too). In 1907, a portion of the field was incorporated into the "Rodessa Land and Development Company." A year later, the first rig was erected at Rodessa, with expectations that "it will make the Caddo field the largest oil producing area in the world, as well as one of the most productive" (The Times (Shreveport, LA), Feb 19, 1908). This was not just some idle talk. By the end of the "boom" in the late 1930s, the oil produced in northwestern Louisiana during the boom was probably worth near $10 billion.

Neighboring communities knew that they had hit the jackpot, and towns like Vivian, Oil City, Mooringsport, Gilliam, Hosston, Mira, Myrtis, and Ida (among others) grew substantially -- they had "Oil League" baseball teams, built large schools for white children, laid out broad streets, and even opened airstrips to accommodate landmen who sought new investment opportunities, as evidenced by some of the communities still-extant buildings from the era.

To help landmen identify locations in the oil fields surrounding Rodessa, the names of the the towns were written onto rooftops during the boom period of the 1920s for helpful air navigation, like this place in Ida.

Mira in Caddo Parish added a directional arrow and mileage to its location marker for its airstrip, eight miles to the east, during the oil boom of the 1920s.

The building in Mira on the ground that showed airplanes where to land from its helpful rooftop signage.

As per usual, the "oil boom" became a bust. This was not due to the pools going dry, however -- oil is still being pumped throughout the region.

The profits gleaned from the oil boom made a few men wealthy, but that did not "trickle down" to the vast majority of people in the region. The local investors consolidated and sold to out-of-state interests, thus siphoning profits away from the region. And while the boom did generate additional monies from an increased working population and ancillary industries like pipe fitting, they were fleeting in nature as newer technologies curtailed the need for workers; the competition for remaining jobs became bitter; and expenditures in public infrastructure upkeep, such as schools and roads and utilities, fell onto the local population.

The boom was also accompanied by a substantial uptick in violence. Some of the "Caddo Field" lay below lands owned by African American people. Land owners Charles Tyson from Mira and Charles Bell from Vivian were assassinated in 1913 by land thieves, and though the motives were clear, the all-white juries in Shreveport failed to criminally indict the perpetrators (whose name remained sealed by the Grand Jury). Bootlegging of moonshine distilled in the deep forests of the area led to prohibitionist reform movements throughout the region.

Today, this area -- once located within a portion of the original "Great Raft of the Red River" -- is nowhere near as wealthy as the oil boom had once promised. The towns in the Caddo Field have lost large swaths of population, including their down towns, schools, and industries. Here are there are even a few abandoned churches. It's disconcerting to recognize that a mere century ago, this was a boom area that could have rivaled international oil wealth.

Another testament to unchecked capitalism, but that's a whole 'nother story.

A February 1912 "Booster Edition" of The Shreveport Journal boasted about the progress of Vivian and Oil City.

Rodessa's substantial High School, built for white children in the 1930s, was last used as an elementary school for black and white children in the 1970s before the school closed in favor of a consolidated district.