SHREVEPORT, La. ( KTAL/KMSS ) – While hiking on the land where early settlers opened the first American trading post with Native Americans (Caddo Nation) in northwest Louisiana, you can easily stumble across tombstones that have become overgrown by the forest high upon a ridgeline that marks the edge of an old channel of the Red River. Covered in decades of soil deposits, and further hidden by layers of fallen leaves, the graves have been hidden by decades worth of overgrowth.
This nearly-forgotten cemetery happens to be one of the oldest Black cemeteries in Shreveport, with some of the birth dates going back to the 1700s.
Here’s the history of an abandoned cemetery and the story of a woman who owned South Highlands before the land was turned into a housing development. And here’s a startling fact: her tombstone seems to be lost in the overgrown woods.