Cross Lake is located within the city limits of Shreveport. It was formed as part of Soda Lake by the Great Raft, a massive logjam that spanned from near Shreveport down to Campti. Steamboat captain Henry Miller Shreve, the namesake of Shreveport, began the clearing of the logjam in the 1830s. What is now Cross Lake drained with the complete removal of the raft in 1875.
What would become Cross Lake was restored in the 1920s to supply water to the booming oil city of Shreveport. Cross Lake Shreveport provides a succinct explanation of the lake's development as the water supply for the city of Shreveport:
"Cross Lake was created as Shreveport’s water supply in 1926 by construction of a concrete dam on the right of way of the Kansas City Southern Railway Company, providing a spillway 225 feet long for lake overflow. Eight thousand feet of the railroad’s embankment on the lake side were made impervious with clay from the lake bed and used as an earthen dam. Large stone was also placed along this earth embankment for protection against wind and wave erosion. Upon completion, the lake had an average depth of 8 feet over 9,000 acres, with a maximum depth of 27 feet in the channel, a width of from 1 to 3 miles by 8 miles in length, and has approximately 56.4 miles of shoreline, and covering nearly 14 square miles of water surface. In 1926, Cross Lake, with its capacity of about 25 billion gallons provided Shreveport with an excellent source of raw water and was a welcome substitute for Red River, the prior source of water supply."
The Shreveport Yacht Club was founded on Cross Lake in 1927 shortly after the lake's completion. A nearly three-mile long bridge, part of the Interstate 220 loop around the northern part of Shreveport/Bossier City, crosses the lake. It was the final portion of the freeway completed in the 1980s.
Sources:
Caddo Parish History
Cross Lake Shreveport
Shreveport Yacht Club
What would become Cross Lake was restored in the 1920s to supply water to the booming oil city of Shreveport. Cross Lake Shreveport provides a succinct explanation of the lake's development as the water supply for the city of Shreveport:
"Cross Lake was created as Shreveport’s water supply in 1926 by construction of a concrete dam on the right of way of the Kansas City Southern Railway Company, providing a spillway 225 feet long for lake overflow. Eight thousand feet of the railroad’s embankment on the lake side were made impervious with clay from the lake bed and used as an earthen dam. Large stone was also placed along this earth embankment for protection against wind and wave erosion. Upon completion, the lake had an average depth of 8 feet over 9,000 acres, with a maximum depth of 27 feet in the channel, a width of from 1 to 3 miles by 8 miles in length, and has approximately 56.4 miles of shoreline, and covering nearly 14 square miles of water surface. In 1926, Cross Lake, with its capacity of about 25 billion gallons provided Shreveport with an excellent source of raw water and was a welcome substitute for Red River, the prior source of water supply."
The Shreveport Yacht Club was founded on Cross Lake in 1927 shortly after the lake's completion. A nearly three-mile long bridge, part of the Interstate 220 loop around the northern part of Shreveport/Bossier City, crosses the lake. It was the final portion of the freeway completed in the 1980s.
Sources:
Caddo Parish History
Cross Lake Shreveport
Shreveport Yacht Club