Shreveport, Louisiana, was founded in 1836 by the Shreve Town Company, a corporation established to develop a town at the juncture of the newly navigable Red River and the Texas Trail, an overland route into the newly independent Republic of Texas and, prior to that time, into Mexico.

The Red River had been cleared by Captain Henry Miller Shreve, commanding the US Army Corps of Engineers, of the 180 mile long raft of debris that had clogged its channel since time immemorial. In Shreve's honor the Shreve Town Company and the village of Shreve Town were named. On March 20, 1839 the village of Shreve Town was incorporated as the town of Shreveport. In 1871 Shreveport was incorporated as a city.

Shreveport's original boundaries were contained within a parcel of land sold to the Shreve Town Company by the indigenous Caddo Indians in 1835. In 1838 Caddo Parish (county) was carved out of Natchitoches Parish and Shreve Town became the parish seat; Shreveport remains the parish seat of Caddo Parish, Louisiana today.

The original town site consisted of sixty-four city blocks divided by eight streets running west from the Red River and eight streets running south from Cross Bayou, a tributary of the red River. Today this sixty-four block area is the city's central business district and is a National Register of Historic Places-listed district.

Shreveport, and its smaller sister city, Bossier City (founded in 1884 and incorporated in 1907) together have six historic districts and many landmarks listed on the National Register. In fact, Shreveport is second only to New Orleans among Louisiana cities with multiple historic landmarks. One of these is the McNeill Street Pumping Station, an 1887 waterworks that is still in use and is the unique example of its type in the nation. It is listed on the National Historic Landmarks list, the highest level of national historical designation. Also located in metro Shreveport is Barksdale Air Force Base, opened in 1933 as Barksdale Army Air Field. It is also a national landmark.

The Red River, opened by Shreve in the 1830s, remained navigable until 1914 when disuse, owing to the rise of the railroad as the preferred means of transporting goods and people, allowed it to begin silting up. Not until the 1990s was navigation of the river again possible to Shreveport. Today the port of Shreveport-Bossier City is being developed once again as a shipping center.