Minden, Louisiana facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Minden, Louisiana
City
City of Minden
Minden City Hall and Convention Center
Location of Minden in Webster Parish, Louisiana.
Minden, Louisiana Location in Louisiana
Country	United States
States	Louisiana
Founded	1836
Area
• Total	15.21 sq mi (39.39 km2)
• Land	15.04 sq mi (38.95 km2)
• Water	0.17 sq mi (0.44 km2)
Population  (2020)
• Total	11,928
• Density	793.24/sq mi (306.27/km2)
Time zone	UTC-6 (CST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
ZIP code	71055
Area code(s)	318
FIPS code	22-50885

Minden is a city and parish seat in Webster Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is located twenty-eight miles east of Shreveport. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 11,928.

History

Minden was established in 1836 by Charles Veeder. Native sons include Gene Austin and Louis Dunbar.

The town's name is derived from the German city of Minden.

During the Civil War, a large Confederate encampment was located inside of Minden. It housed about 15,000 Confederate soldiers. The town served as a supply depot for the Confederate Army. Close to thirty Confederate soldiers who died in the Battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill are buried in the Old Minden Cemetery.

In the Great Blizzard of 1899, Minden experienced the coldest temperature ever recorded in Louisiana, when the temperature fell on February 13, 1899 to −16 °F or −26.7 °C.

During the Great Depression, one of the two Minden banks failed and a fire destroyed a major section of the downtown area (1931).

On May 1, 1933, a tornado occurred in the town, destroying 20% of the homes.

History

Louisiana and Arkansas Railway depot in Minden, c. 1904

The Federal Building at 111 South Monroe Street in Minden has since 1959 housed the post office. From 1916 to 1959, the United States post office was located on Main Street in a building later occupied by a bank. It moved in 1959 to the Federal Building. Previous to 1916, the post office in Minden had been located in leased locations.

The Minden Coca-Cola Bottling Plant is a distribution center at 412 Pine Street across from Minden Cemetery

Early settlement

Among the original settlers in the Minden area was Newitt Drew, a Welshman originally from Virginia, who built a gristmill and sawmill on Dorcheat Bayou in south Webster Parish in what became the since defunct Overton community. Minden itself was established in 1836 by Charles H. Veeder, a native of Schenectady, New York, who named it for the city of Minden in Germany. Veeder left Minden during the California Gold Rush and spent the rest of his life practicing law in Bakersfield, California.

A year before Veeder arrived, a group from Phillipsburg (now Monaca), Pennsylvania, led by the Countess Leon, settled seven miles (11 km) northeast of Minden in what was then Claiborne Parish. For nearly four decades, this Germantown Colony operated on a communal basis. It was dispersed in 1871, when Webster Parish was severed from Claiborne Parish. The "Countess" moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where she died in 1881.

One of three Utopian Society settlements in this area, the Germantown Colony was the most successful and lasted the longest, having peaked at fifty to sixty pioneers but usually with fewer than forty followers. The settlement had been planned by the countess’ husband, Bernhard Müller, known as the Count von Leon. He died of yellow fever on August 29, 1834, at Grand Ecore, four miles (6 km) from Natchitoches, before he reached Webster Parish. Leon and his followers attempted to build an earthly utopia, socialist in practice, while awaiting for the Second Coming of Christ. For his religious views, Leon had been exiled from Germany. He intended to plant the settlement in Webster Parish to coincide with the latitude of Jerusalem, 31 degrees, 47 minutes. The colonists worshiped under oak trees at the center of the colony. They supported themselves from farming, with a concentration on cotton. The settlement is preserved at the Germantown Colony and Museum.

A second museum in Minden, the Dorcheat Historical Association Museum, named for Dorcheat Bayou, is located downtown at 116 Pearl Street near the post office. It preserves the cultural history of the city and parish from the 19th century.

Civil War

Statue of a Confederate soldier at the western end of Jacqueline Park in Minden near the point where Main and Broadway streets turn into the Shreveport Road. The caption concludes with "Lest We Forget" engraved twice.

During the American Civil War, a large Confederate encampment, which housed some 15,000 soldiers was located east of Minden. At the time Minden was a supply depot for the troops. Some thirty Confederate soldiers who died in the Battle of Mansfield and another engagement at Pleasant Hill are buried in the historic Minden Cemetery located at Pine and Goodwill streets and Bayou Avenue. A modern cemetery, Gardens of Memory, opened in 1957 off the Lewisville Road north of Minden.

In 1862, Confederate General Richard Taylor, son of Zachary Taylor, issued orders to round up deserters. According to the historian John D. Winters of Louisiana Tech University, near Minden were seen "many robust-looking men claiming to be 'discharged soldiers.'" General Taylor reported that a "'large number of persons liable to military service . . . , deserters, enrolled conscripts who have failed to report, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, are to be found throughout the state.' He ordered militia officers and parish sheriffs to arrest all men who could not prove legal exemption or absence from military service because of furlough or parole. Liberal rewards were offered for the apprehension of such men."

Governor Henry Watkins Allen tried to make the state self-sufficient during the war. A factory for the manufacture of cotton and wool cards was erected at Minden and in full operation by the end of the war. In 1864–1865, divisions of General Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac, hero at Mansfield, and Maj. Gen. John H. Forney established winter quarters near Minden.

Coldest state temperature

On February 13, 1890, Minden recorded the state's all-time coldest temperature, −16 °F (−27 °C) degrees during the height of the Great Blizzard. Another −16 °F (−27 °C) reading was recorded in Minden on February 2, 1899. The humid subtropical climate, however, is usually mild in winter and mostly hot in summer.

1933 tornado

1933 Disastrous year at Dorcheat Historical Association Museum in Minden

Since October 1940, a barber shop has operated at this Main Street location in Minden. It was established by Dan T. Pace, Sr. (1906-1973), and continued by his son, Dan, Jr. (1929-2000).

During the Great Depression, one of the two Minden banks failed. Five banks now exist, Minden Building and Loan, Capital One, Regions, Citizens, and Richland State. On May 1, 1933, a tornado destroyed some 20 percent of the residences in Minden. Thereafter, a fire destroyed many homes and much of the business district, including the large Goodwill Building, established in 1882 by Alfred Goodwill, which once housed the largest general store in Louisiana. During the national bank holiday of 1933, the funds of both Minden citizens and businesses were frozen, making recovery from the tornado and the fire more difficult. Later, a summer flood destroyed a third of the crops in the area. Because of these quadruple tragedies, 1933 has been called the "Year of Disaster" in Minden.

Ben F. Turner, Sr. (1883–1934), was the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway express agent in Minden and the volunteer fire chief. During the 1933 fire, he sustained a heart attack and hence died the next year of cardiac failure. Oddly, Ben Turner's grandfather had died in 1835 while fighting a fire at a brush arbor meeting in Georgia. Ben Turner's son, Harold Martin "Happy" Turner (1911–1988), was a well-known boarding house, restaurant owner, and civic booster in Minden.

1946 lynching case

The 1946 beatings and attempted lynchings of John Cecil Jones and Albert Harris, Jr., African-American men, were instances of violence against black veterans in the post-war years. The events were covered up by Minden police, the Webster Parish Sheriff's Department, the coroner's office, and several well-known individuals in the community. The crime was the only lynching in Louisiana that year. J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, investigated the case and wrote: "We had incontrovertible evidence of a multiple-agency cover-up."

Hank Williams married in Minden

Country singer Hank Williams, Sr., married Billie Jean Jones Eshliman in Minden on October 18, 1952. The next day, the couple repeated the vows in two separate public ceremonies. Less than three months later, Williams was dead. A judge ruled that the wedding was not legal because Billie Jean's divorce did not become final until eleven days after she had married Williams. Billie Jean later married Johnny Horton, another notable singer. Horton died in 1960 and is interred at Hill Crest Cemetery in Haughton in Bossier Parish.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 31.0 km² (12.0 mi²). 30.8 km² (11.9 mi²) of it is land and 0.2 km² (0.1 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 0.75% water.

Climate

Demographics

As of the 2020 United States census, there were 11,928 people, 5,189 households, and 3,126 families residing in the city.

St. Jude Hospital

Minden has long led the nation in per capita fundraising for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. From 1975 to 2015, city residents raised $13,923,763. Early in 2016, another $1,441,599 was raised through auction, a benefit run, and school fundraisers. In the first year of the auction, $10,000 was raised, but the amounts grew rapidly over the ensuing years. Annual records have frequently been toppled.

In popular culture

On January 9, 2012, MTV premiered the reality television show Caged, about mixed martial artists fighting to gain the means to leave Minden.

Gallery

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  First Baptist Church at 301 Pennsylvania Avenue; since 2009, Leland Crawford has served as the senior pastor; George Washington Baines, maternal great-grandfather of U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, was the founding pastor in the 19th century.
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  St. John's Episcopal Church at 1107 Broadway, also in the Minden Historic District
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  Earlier located for decades at 609 Goodwill Street near the parish fairgrounds under the pastor T. W. Barnes, who served there in the pulpit from 1947 until his death in 2006, the First United Pentecostal Church now occupies new quarters at 612 Highway 531.
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  Formerly downtown across from the courthouse, St. Paul Catholic Church is located at 410 Fincher Road.
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  Main Street in Minden facing west
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  Downtown Minden with the signature water tower in the background
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  The main Webster Parish Library operates on East and West Street in Minden, with branches located throughout the parish.
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  The Minden Community House is located at Victory Park in this facility completed in 1987 by the W-M Construction Company of Minden, after the previous contractor, Tarver Brothers of Shreveport, defaulted on the project. The previous community house building was razed.
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  Attractive but small Academy Park in the Minden Historic District is the site of the former Minden Male Academy.
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  Minden Historic Residential District sign in Academy Park
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  The McDonald-Monk House, built in Victorian style in 1904 at the intersection of Lewisville Road and East and West Street in the Historic Residential District, was added in 1986 to the National Register of Historic Places. The house is named for its builder, the banker J. W. McDonald, and the educator Miriam Robinson Monk (1923–2006), who purchased it in 1968.
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  Dorcheat Historical Association Museum at 116 Pearl Street near the post office sponsors monthly public lectures.
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  One of the oldest continuous businesses in Minden is the Western Auto dealership operated downtown by John P. Collins and previously by his grandfather and mother.
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  The former Holland Crawford Insurance agency clock has long been a mainstay of downtown Minden. The company was founded by Castle Overstreet Holland (1895–1981) and operated until 2012 by his son-in-law, Wayne Scott Crawford (1928–2014).
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  Minden Medical Center, located downtown, ranks among the "Top 100" hospitals in the nation.
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  Fountain behind the Veterans Memorial at Turner's Pond near E.S. Richardson Elementary School
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  This historic bell, a gift to the City of Minden by the family of James Anderson Powell, Sr. (1921-2016), of the former Blazer Construction Company, previously hanged over the former Webster Parish Courthouse building from 1905 to 1951.
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  Historic Dorcheat Bayou between Minden and Dixie Inn is a popular fishing area.
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  Historic Minden Cemetery has graves as far back as 1843 and the American Civil War. Many Minden mayors are interred there.
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  Downtown Minden welcome sign on Main Street
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  Coca Cola Mural Advertisement from 1943 in Minden.

See also

In Spanish: Minden (Luisiana) para niños