Awesome post about the old Shed Road by Bossier Parish Libraries History Center!! ... See MoreSee Less

Cedar Grove History Saved by Accident!

Here are some really cool old photos from August 1954 that we found a while back at the Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS in the J. Frank McAneny Collection! As many of you know, old J. Frank was a photographer for The Shreveport Times back then and loved to photograph wrecks around this area!

In these photos he stood out in the middle of Linwood Ave, and snapped photos of the intersection of Linwood and W. 70th looking north and south. It seems that a Pontiac and motorcycle collided a few minutes earlier and J. Frank was, as usual, on the scene to photograph the incident! Thanks to J. Frank McAneny we have tons of photos wrecks and the moments in time that were captured along with them! ... See MoreSee Less

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Downtown Shreveport: A Look back to the 1950s!

Here are some really cool old photos from the 1950s that we found a while back at the Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS in the J. Frank McAneny Collection! As many of you know, old J. Frank was a photographer for The Shreveport Times back then and loved to photograph wrecks around this area!

One story even has him flying past the then Sheriff J. Howell Flournoy on the way to an accident. When the Sheriff arrived at the scene, our guy J. Frank had already photographed the wreck as well as everything around it! Needless to say Flournoy was not happy about it and threatened to put McAneny under the jail if that ever happened again! We are quite certain the sheriff's warning went in one ear and out the other! What we love about J. Frank is that he wasn't afraid to get out in the middle of the road to get that "perfect shot."

The photos attached were taken in March of 1954 right after a wreck at the intersection of Common Street and Crockett Street in downtown Shreveport, These types of photos are what we call "History Saved by Accident" photos. Whenever there was an accident and the photographer on the scene documented the wreck not only did they capture images of the wreck itself they also captured moments in time that will never come again! Images like this show buildings that no longer exist and gives us all a glimpse of the past that we would otherwise never see! For more old photos like this search Facebook for "Twin Blends History Saved by Accident!" ... See MoreSee Less

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Summer Grove A Look Back to 1973!

Growing up in Southern Hills, we have always been fascinated with it's rich history. When we decided to start our Twin Blends history quest back around 2015, one of the very first photos that we hoped to find was a photo of the once popular Simmons Service Center. Mr. Simmons was a well known fellow that owned a lot of land in the area and one one of his most popular spots was his Service Center that was located at the corner of Highway 171 (Mansfield Road) and Flournoy Lucas/ Reisor Rd (Bert Kouns). Our cousin Ronny Walker used to pump gas there and our dad bought a StarCraft pop up camper from Mr. Simmons back in 1973. That photo just seemed to be impossible to find. A couple of years ago, we did find a few aerial photos of that area in the Thurman C. Smith collection that showed Simmons Service Center but we hadn’t found any ground photos of it. Well low and behold while continuing to search through the huge negative collection of Thurman C. Smith, we pulled out not only a photo of Simmons Service Center but the entire area around it from 1973! We couldn’t believe it! The envelope said “Brookshire’s in Summer Grove. Mansfield & Flournoy Lucas Rd”. We thought “Cool, it will show the Brookshire’s when it was new”. We didn’t even think that it would show the main picture (Simmons Grocery) that we had been searching for all these years! We were stunned when, looking at the negatives through a magnifying glass, we saw the sign that said “Simmons Service Center”. Then we saw the pop up campers. We had at last found one of the “Holy Grail” photos that we have been looking for! To give everyone a good look at the area, we decided to stitch the photos together on each side of Mansfield Rd. to make two cool panoramas!

Back to Simmons Service Center...the photos were taken the same year that our dad bought his camper and you can clearly see the campers sitting behind the station and not only that, the truck in front of Simmons looks a lot like our dad's old truck! Talk about a blast from the past!!!

We are so thankful that Thurman C. Smith documented so much of our history and we can not wait to show y'all more!!!! **We added the words “Simmons Grocery!” to the envelope to help us find them later during the scanning process. **

These photos as well as all of the other negatives in the Thurman C. Smith collection have been donated to the Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS!

Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS
The Shreveport Times
Twin Blends: Northwest Louisiana History Hunters ... See MoreSee Less

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Summer Grove. La.
History Saved by Accident!

Here they are as promised! It took a day or so to put together but now you can see what Mansfield Rd at Flournoy Lucas (now Bert Kouns) looked like back in 1955! As we said on Facebook Live yesterday, we came across these old picture negatives at the Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS. They were in an envelope labeled "Summer Grove wreck 1955" taken by J. Frank McAneny.

The pictures showed both directions looking North and South. At first, we didn’t think they were a big deal. Since there wasn’t anything in the pictures but an old building that looked like maybe a church on the hill and another small building located close to a dirt road crossover street, we just assumed the pictures were taken far down Mansfield Rd. in a remote area and none of it probably existed anymore. After studying the pictures though, we saw a small, almost too hard to make out, sign that said, “Quick Cleaners”.

After researching that business name, we found an old newspaper advertisement that said it was located at 9175 Mansfield Rd and the owner was H.A. Lazarus. (Lazarus and his wife were very prominent members of the Summer Grove area). When we put that address in Google Earth, we were shocked! It pulled up the area about where Capital One on Mansfield Rd. is now (next to Posados Cafe! That meant that the church on the hill was the old Summer Grove Baptist Church building and that the dirt crossover street was Flournoy Lucas Rd!

Then we came across another picture also looking North but this picture was taken on the opposite side of the intersection and in this photo there was a small street sign that you could barely read that said “Flournoy Lucas”. Now we were 100% positive of the location! We couldn’t wait to do a Facebook Live to show all of our followers! We are attaching those pictures to the post as well as colorized versions that we made to help bring them to life! To pinpoint where everything is today, we are adding duplicate photos of the 1955 pictures with arrows pointing to where things would later be!

We are also adding a drone shot to give everyone “now pictures” of what that area looks like today! You can see that where Shane's Seafood and BarBQ is today was nothing but woods and pasture back in 1955! Maybe someone can identify the old stone house the wrecked car is parked in front of!

Thanks to J. Frank McAneny, we are able to look back into a sort of “time portal” of what Shreveport and Bossier City used to look like way back in the day! And thanks to the Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS for preserving all of the negatives and pictures like this, otherwise they would be lost forever!
***BONUS SUMMER GROVE PICTURES!
We are also adding in pictures of:

Pictures taken in 1958 of the Mansfield Rd area around Hoyte Drive. You can even see a Pan Am gas station about where Shane’s Crawfish Shack is today on the frontage road down from Kroger's!
Please share with your friends and tell them to follow us on Facebook for more exciting photos of what used to be!
Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS
The Shreveport Times

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