Discovery-Rodessa Oil Field

Rodessa's oil years were short and hard on the village. An F4 tornado struck in February 1938, destroyed much of the village and killed 21 people. The field itself sprawls past the state line: Wikipedia puts the Rodessa Oilfield at 2,779 acres, extending into Cass and Marion counties in Texas, where most of the drilling happens, and dates the start of drilling to 1936, a year after the plaque's discovery. The old frog-pond name, Frog Level, lingers in local talk, and the village counted 192 people in 2020.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum — 15 mi
  The state's first public petroleum museum in Oil City, on the 1905 Caddo Parish strike and the 1911 over-water well on Caddo Lake, with a derrick and a log-jam exhibit.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 23 mi
  A Civilian Conservation Corps park on the Texas shore of Caddo Lake, where the Caddo told of a lake made by wind-driven water and visitors now paddle Big Cypress Bayou past moss-hung bald cypress.
• Atlanta State Park — 23 mi
  A shoreline park on Wright Patman Lake, leased from the Army in 1954, where Caddo ancestors farmed the Sulphur River and wagon traces such as the Bobo Ferry trace still cross the woods.
• Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 23 mi
  Wetlands and woods on part of a former ammunition plant, now a refuge for wood ducks, prothonotary warblers and alligator snapping turtles, with four easy trails and a free visitor center on a Ramsar lake.

More markers nearby

• Vivian Railroad Station — 6.9 mi
• Smyrna Baptist Church — 9.0 mi
• Potter's Point — 13 mi
• Bessie Coleman — 14 mi