Bayou Pierre (Louisiana)

Bayou Pierre is a partially man-made bayou and ancient course of the Red River in Louisiana, United States. It is a tributary of the Red River originating from an ancient bend of the Red River at Coate's Bluff (Wright Island) in Shreveport, LA (now blocked off by a levee to prevent the Red River from flooding into Bayou Pierre) and merging west from the town of Clarence, Louisiana. The upper part of Bayou Pierre within Shreveport city limits is now a concrete drainage ditch at the bottom of the former watercourse, and provides street drainage for much of eastern Shreveport before the concrete drainage ditch section ends south of LA 526.

Before the clearing of the Great Raftthat blocked much of the Red River and diverted water into alternate waterways such as Bayou Pierre, Bayou Pierre served as a navigable water route connecting the downriver plantations with Shreveport. Steamships would dock at the current site of Betty Virginia Park in Shreveport in order to bypass the raft and serve the plantations downriver. The 1835 treaty in which the Caddo sold their lands to the U.S. was signed at an Indian Agency House on the banks of Bayou Pierre, the location of which was also used to define the terms of the treaty.