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CHAMPION LAKE – TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS!!

Every summer back in the 1980s and 1990s, Champion Lake would be absolutely swarming with people! The Tournament of Champions Waterski Tournament was a nationally known event, putting Shreveport in the spotlight every summer as some of the best water-skiers in the country came to town — and thousands of spectators came out to watch!

For those of us who remember it, Champion Lake was the place to be! And for those who don't, these incredible photographs give us a chance to see just how big this event really was.

A huge THANK YOU to the Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS for preserving these amazing glimpses into Shreveport's past!

And don't just look at the pictures — click the link below to see an ACTUAL VIDEO of the Tournament of Champions from 1987!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcQG5EyMLO0

Share your memories!!

#TwinBlends #ShreveportHistory #ChampionLake #TournamentOfChampions #WaterSkiing #NorthwestLouisianaHistory #ShreveportLouisiana #LouisianaHistory #ThenAndNow ... See MoreSee Less

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Lost Shreveport : Victory Natatorium!

In 1919, Shreveport saw the construction of the Victory Natatorium Pool. It was the largest salt water pool around and people came from all over to swim here. Check out the water tower in that one picture. That water tower held saltwater!

The pool was dedicated to the end of the Great War, hence the name Victory. Located not far from downtown, where McNeil St. meets Fourth St. behind Hamilton Terrace School, it was a very popular place to swim. It was later named the Municipal Pool. Sadly, the only thing that remains is its "footprint".

Thurman C. Smith snapped an aerial photo of it back in 1986, and the late historian, Eric Brock, captured images of the bathhouse structure being demolished in 1992.

We are bringing it back to life by showing everyone these cool old photos that we found at the Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS!

Be sure to "Like" and "Subscribe" to our Twin blends Northwest Louisiana History Hunters page for more exciting history!
Photos Courtesy Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS

Check out our Victory Pool video here
www.facebook.com/share/v/1G7aaNBeAA/ ... See MoreSee Less

Highway 80 in WW2!

Awesome presentation by Wesley Harris! Speaker Wesley Harris, a retired law enforcement executive and instructor in criminal justice, is also the historian at Claiborne Parish Library and president of the Board of Directors of the Lincoln Parish Museum & Historical Society. He serves as the editor of North Louisiana History, the official journal of the North Louisiana Historical Association, and is a writer for the Lincoln Parish Journal. ... See MoreSee Less

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UPDATE: WE WERE WRONG ABOUT WHERE THE MASTODON TOOTH WAS FOUND!

10-POUND MASTODON TOOTH WAS FOUND 60 FEET BELOW THE RED RIVER!
Yep… you read that right!

And we have a BIG correction to make to our original post.

Thanks to the keen eye of Twin Blends Teammate Ron Massey, we now realize that we had the location of this incredible discovery WRONG!

When we originally shared this story, we believed the mastodon tooth had been discovered during construction of the Miller’s Bluff Bridge near Hosston.

But Ron caught something we had completely overlooked in an old newspaper article.

The article stated that the remains were discovered east of Broadmoor during construction of the bridge over the Red River.
That was the clue we needed.

After going back and digging through the information again, we now realize that the bridge mentioned in that article was the Shreveport-Barksdale Bridge!

So, the mastodon tooth was NOT found during construction of the Miller’s Bluff Bridge near Hosston, as we originally reported.

It was discovered during construction of the Shreveport-Barksdale Bridge over the Red River!

And that correction has led us to an even MORE incredible discovery!

WE FOUND THE OTHER PART OF THE TOOTH!
THE DISCOVERY

Back in 1955, workers with the Kansas City Bridge crew were digging deep into the Red River bed while constructing the Shreveport-Barksdale Bridge when they made an absolutely incredible discovery.

Buried roughly 60 feet beneath the Red River bed was a HUGE mastodon tooth weighing approximately 10 pounds!

But here’s where this story gets REALLY crazy…

OUR GRANDFATHER WAS ONE OF THE MEN WHO FOUND IT!

When we first shared the story of this mastodon tooth several years ago, we had absolutely NO IDEA that our own grandfather, William Dunbar, had been involved in its discovery.

About 8 years ago, our mom casually mentioned that Papaw Dunbar had found something while he was helping build a bridge somewhere around Shreveport.

Well… that got our attention!

We started digging.

We wanted to know exactly what he had found.

Our cousin, Barbara Zeigler Winkler, told us that she remembered seeing the object when she was a little girl at the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum. She thought she remembered it being a mastodon foot.

Then we heard the word…

MASTODON.

That’s when everything clicked.

We showed Barbara a photograph of the tooth.

She immediately recognized it.

“THAT’S IT!”

We were absolutely blown away.

Think about that…

We had ALREADY made a post telling the story of this incredible mastodon discovery.

And we had NO CLUE that our grandfather was one of the men standing there when it was found!

What are the odds?!

AND THEN WE HEARD FROM HARRY SOLOMON…

After our post, Harry Solomon reached out to us with an incredible family story involving his wife’s father, W. T. Burt, of Benton, Louisiana.

Sometime in the 1950s, Mr. Burt was operating a dragline when a friend he was working with discovered a much larger piece of a mastodon tooth.

Mr. Burt was so interested in the discovery that he actually tried to buy the piece from his coworker!

For years, the family remembered hearing that Mr. Burt believed he was dragging the Mississippi River when the piece was discovered, although they weren't certain of the exact location.

Then Harry looked closely at the photograph of the tooth we had shared.

And that’s when another piece of this incredible story fell into place.

Harry told us that, looking at our photograph, the piece his wife's father had seen appeared to fit perfectly onto the end of the tooth!

IT WAS THE OTHER PART OF THE TOOTH!

What an unbelievable connection.

The piece discovered by W. T. Burt and his coworker was the missing portion of the very same mastodon tooth!

So what we thought was one incredible discovery has now turned into something even more extraordinary.

A mastodon tooth was pulled from deep beneath the river decades ago…

Our grandfather William Dunbar was there when it was discovered…

And another Northwest Louisiana family had the other portion of that same tooth!

Think about how incredible that is.

Two separate families.

Two pieces of a prehistoric animal.

And decades later, the pieces finally came back together through an old photograph and a family memory.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL…

The bridge crew also discovered a vertebra from a prehistoric camel!

Both the mastodon tooth and prehistoric camel remains were eventually given to the Louisiana State Exhibit Museum.
And incredibly, this wasn’t the only prehistoric discovery along the Red River.

In 1986, a mastodon skull, tusks and other skeletal remains were discovered in the Red River near Texarkana, Arkansas.
Just imagine what lies beneath the river!

For thousands of years, prehistoric animals roamed this part of the country.

Then, in 1955, construction workers digging deep beneath the Red River suddenly came face-to-face with a piece of that ancient world.

And now, more than 70 years later, we have connected another piece of that ancient world to a Northwest Louisiana family.

TWO FAMILIES. ONE MASTODON. ONE INCREDIBLE STORY.

This is exactly why we love digging into history.

Sometimes you start looking for an old story…
…and end up discovering YOUR OWN FAMILY WAS THERE.

And sometimes, just when you think you have the story figured out, another family reaches out and helps you put the missing pieces back together.

That’s the beauty of history.

You truly NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’LL FIND FROM THE PAST!

Photos courtesy of the Northwest Louisiana Archives at Northwest Louisiana Archives at LSUS

A HUGE thank you to Twin Blends Teammate Ron Massey for catching the location mistake in the original newspaper article.

And an equally huge THANK YOU to Harry Solomon and his family for sharing this incredible story about W. T. Burt.

Without these family memories, we may have never realized that the missing piece of this prehistoric puzzle was connected to another Northwest Louisiana family.

HISTORY JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER!

(This story was edited through the use of ChatGPT.)

#TwinBlends #TwinBlendsHistory #NorthwestLouisianaHistory #ShreveportHistory #LouisianaHistory #RedRiverHistory #RedRiver #Mastodon #MastodonTooth #MastodonFossil #PrehistoricLouisiana #LouisianaPrehistory #Fossils #ShreveportBarksdaleBridge #BarksdaleBridge #LouisianaStateExhibitMuseum #LSUSArchives #NorthwestLouisianaArchives #HistoryHunters #HiddenHistory #FamilyHistory #LouisianaFossils #RedRiverValley #YouNeverKnowWhatYoullFind ... See MoreSee Less