Minden, Louisiana

Minden is a city in the American state of Louisiana. It serves as the parish seat of Webster Parish and is located twenty-eight miles east of Shreveport, the seat of Caddo Parish. The population, which has been stable since 1960, was 13,027 at the 2000 census. It has possessed a post office since 1839.

Minden is the principal city of the Minden Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of the larger Shreveport-Bossier City-Minden Combined Statistical Area.

The community has been served by a newspaper since the 1850s, and the city's present publication, Minden Press-Herald, which has its office in a building previously occupied by a supermarket on Gleason Street south of Broadway Street, dates as a daily to July 18, 1966, but was earlier published as two weekly papers, Minden Press on Mondays and Minden Herald on Thursdays. For a time there was also the Webster Signal-Tribune.

Geography

Demographics

There were 5,166 households, out of which 30.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 39.6% were married couples living together, 22.8% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.6% were non-families. 30.9% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.44 and the average family size was 3.05.

In the city of Minden, the population was spread out with 27.0% under the age of 18, 8.6% from 18 to 24, 25.3% from 25 to 44, 21.2% from 45 to 64, and 17.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years, higher than the state median age of 34.0 years. For every 100 females there were 84.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 77.7 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $24,175, and the median income for a family was $31,477. Males had a median income of $28,401 versus $19,199 for females. The per capita income for the city was $14,114. About 21.0% of families and 26.6% of the population were below the poverty line, including 39.3% of those under age 18 and 20.1% of those age 65 or over.

History

Early settlement

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. 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.

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 1864-1985, 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

Will Life

Ben F. Turner, Sr. (1883–1934), was the Louisiana and Arkansas Railway express agent in Minden as well as 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 he was fighting a fire at a brush arbor meeting in Georgia. Ben Turner's son, Harold Martin "Happy" Turner (1911–1988), was a well-known restaurant owner and civic booster in Minden.

Larry B. Hunter (1896-1971) and his wife, the former Gladys Powell (1899-1973), a native of Sibley, for decades operated the Coca-Cola Bottling Company outlet in Minden. While soft drinks were produced at the facility into the 1960s, the facility is now a distribution center. It is located across from Minden Cemetery. The Hunters also subsidized the Minden Redbirds semi-professional baseball team and built the former Hunter's recreation complex, which served the youth of Minden from 1940 to 1965. In 1950, Gladys Hunter, became the first woman ever to be elected to the Webster Parish School Board, where she served two six-year terms.

Artist Ben Earl Looney was born in the Yellow Pine community in south Webster Parish and graduated from Minden High School in 1923. He taught art throughout the United States in a career from the 1920s until his death in Lafayette in 1981.

Minden businesses

In the mid-20th century, Minden had two film theaters and a third drive-in facility. To promote the film industry, theater owners Edgar Beach Hands, Jr. (1905-1972), and Ruth Cheshire Lowe in 1951 hosted several film stars in a visit to the city. One was a future U.S. senator from California, George Murphy. Another was Robert Stack of the later ABC television series The Untouchables. Jesse White, best known for Maytag commercials, also visited. By the late 1970s, Minden had no theaters. However, in the 21st century, several motion pictures have been filmed in the city and the surrounding areas of Webster Parish.

The Webster Parish Courthouse, completed in 1953, is located a few yards west of its former location, which in the early 1970s became a parking lot for the Minden City Hall/Civic Center.

Minden is the city of license for CW affiliate KPXJ, Channel 21.

Education