Coates Bluff

Shreveport nearly began here. When the Shreve Town Company chose a site in 1836, Angus McNeill also suggested the bluffs above Wright Island, where Jim Coates ran a store and a settlement had grown up. The company picked the ridge by Cane and Bennett's store near the Texas Trail instead. Another name on the marker, Larkin Edwards, was allowed to pick 640 acres within the land the Caddo ceded under the treaty of 1835, ratified about February 1, 1836; he sold the tract to McNeill for $5,000 the next day.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Shreveport Municipal Auditorium — 2.0 mi
  The Art Deco hall of 1929 where the Louisiana Hayride went out over KWKH from 1948 to 1960 and where Elvis Presley first played Shreveport on October 16, 1954.
• Spring Street Museum — 2.1 mi
  An 1866 bank building downtown that also held a Freedman's Savings and Trust branch in 1870, now a free LSUS-run museum with a Victorian parlor and the original vault.
• R. W. Norton Art Gallery — 2.6 mi
  A free art museum and 40 acres of azalea gardens in Shreveport, founded in 1946 on Rodessa oil money, with Remington and Russell, an Audubon folio and no photography allowed.
• Shreveport Water Works Museum — 2.6 mi
  An 1887 brick pumping station on McNeill Street where Worthington steam pumps ran until 1980, now a free museum and a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• Fort Humbug — 0.5 mi
• Pete Youree Confederate Monument — 0.8 mi
• Centenary College of Louisiana — 0.8 mi
• Masonic Temple — 1.0 mi