Oil City

Oil City's population peaked long after the boom. About 25,000 people worked in and around the field by 1910, but that was a work force, not a count of residents; the town itself reached 1,430 in 1960, fell to 907 by 1970 and stood at 901 in 2020. The strike that started it came on March 28, 1905, a year before the date on the plaque. The town park is named for Earl Williamson, who served on the Caddo Parish police jury. Actor Earl Holliman is listed among its natives.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Louisiana State Oil and Gas Museum — 0.6 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 National Wildlife Refuge — 12 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.
• Caddo Lake State Park — 13 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.
• Shreveport Water Works Museum — 20 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

• Trees City Office & Bank — steps away
• Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter — 1.1 mi
• Caddo Lake — 1.1 mi
• First Over Water Oil Well — 1.1 mi