The broad avenue that splits downtown Shreveport in any other city might be called Main Street. Here it's called Texas Street, after the old Texas Trail from the Red River west. Other downtown streets are named after figures of the Texas War for Independence including Davy Crockett. That's because of the close ties between early Shreveport and Texas pioneers. The people who settled both areas in the 1820s and 1830s came from the Appalachian region.

They were Scots-Irish and Protestant. To this day -- though we have welcomed many other cultural and ethnic influences -- the culture in this city of roughly 200,000 is more Protestant and conservative than in South Louisiana. And we're still Texas-oriented, with Dallas being only 3 hours away by interstate. The city, established in 1839, is named after Capt. Henry Miller Shreve, who spent four years clearing the "Great Raft' -- a 165-mile logjam of the Red River. Shreve's invention, the snag boat, opened up the river to more settlers, traders and steamboat traffic. Now commercial traffic is beginning to build again on the Red River, as a federal project has once again made the river navigable. Also enjoying the newer, greener Red River: fishing boats, ski boats and speed boats. And floating casinos, docked on both the Shreveport and the Bossier City side. And guess where most of our visitors are coming from -- 60 to 70 percent, according to tourism studies? From the Lone Star state -- Texas.