Ark-La-Tex

Although use of the term to refer to the tri-state region dates back to the early 1900s, the name "Ark-La-Tex" was popularized regionally by a Shreveport Chamber of Commerce promotional campaign developed in 1932–33 to increase tourism in the area.^[4]

The campaign, dubbing the area as "The Land of Arklatex", was based on the idea that "the interests of all the people in the Tri-state area of South Arkansas, North Louisiana and East Texas are practically identical in matters pertaining to agriculture, industry, commerce and trade, and education." The region is alternatively, although seldom in most media and promotional parlance, referred to as "Arklatexoma", which more inclusively encompasses McCurtain County and other parts of extreme Southeastern Oklahoma that lie along the Red River.^[5][6]

The Ark-La-Tex covers over 14,000 square miles (36,000 km²) across the four-state area;^[7] if the Ark-La-Tex were a U.S. state, it would be larger than Maryland. Most of the Ark-La-Tex is located in the Piney Woods, an ecoregion of dense forests of mixed deciduous and conifer flora. The forests are periodically punctuated by sloughs and bayous that are linked to larger bodies of water such as Caddo Lake or the Red River. Three of the four National Forests located within the Piney Woods of East Texas are wholly or partially within the Ark-La-Tex boundaries: Angelina National Forest (spanning Angelina, Nacogdoches, San Augustine and Jasper counties), Sabine National Forest (near Hemphill) and Davy Crockett National Forest (between Lufkin and Crockett).

The Red River is the principal mainstem waterway in the region, exiting from the eastern end of Lake Texoma and running generally east along the Oklahoma–Texas border towards Southwestern Arkansas (entering it near the state line between Little River County, Arkansas, and Bowie County, Texas) before turning southward northwest of Texarkana (in so doing, forming the eastern border of Miller County) and passing into Northwestern Louisiana. The bordering Louisiana cities of Shreveport and Bossier City were developed along the river bank; its span within the Ark-La-Tex ends in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana (where the Red River spans to the adjacent northwest of the parish's namesake county seat), at its intersection with Grant and Rapides parishes.

As with all vernacular regions, the Ark-La-Tex has no official boundaries or status and is defined differently by various sources.^[1][8] Most definitions of the Ark-La-Tex delineate the region as encompassing 40 parishes and counties, and most weather radars suggest a 40-county or -parish area.^[9][10]

Alternate definitions can include eight additional Texas counties (Lamar, Delta, Hopkins, Franklin, Wood, Smith, Cherokee, and Angelina), include the Monroe, Louisiana metropolitan area and Ouachita Parish, Louisiana (which is considered part of the Ark-La-Miss region), exclude the counties encompassing the El Dorado, Arkansas micropolitan area, or exclude McCurtain County, Oklahoma. McCurtain County is usually included in the region's areal definition, primarily for media distribution purposes, even though the Oklahoma Department of Tourism and Recreation formally defines it as being part of its Choctaw Country tourism region.^[11] Another alternate definition is solely the vicinity of the Ark-La-Tex region's three principal cities, Shreveport, Longview, and Texarkana.

The Ark-La-Tex is situated in a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) typical of the Southeastern United States, albeit occasionally interrupted by intrusions of cold air during the winter months. Rainfall is abundant, with the normal annual precipitation averaging over 51 inches (1.3 m) in some areas (such as Shreveport), with monthly averages ranging from less than three inches (76 mm) in August to more than five inches (130 mm) in June. Portions of East Texas within the region receive more rainfall, 35 to 60 inches (890 to 1,520 mm), than the rest of the state.^[12] Due to the flat topography of some areas and the prominence of smaller waterways that are prone to backwater flooding from the Red River, communities occasionally experience severe flooding events. A notable occurrence of severe flooding occurred in March 2016, after torrential rains caused a rapid rise of many local waterways, displacing upwards of 3,500 people from their homes across Caddo and Bossier parishes and adjacent areas of Northwest Louisiana that lie along the Red River.^[13][14] Freezing rain and ice storms occasionally occur during the winter months.

Severe thunderstorms with heavy rain, hail, damaging winds and tornadoes occur in the area during the spring and summer months, although severe weather can also occur during the winter months. The region is in the western section of the "Dixie Alley" tornado climatology region, where tornadogenesis is most often attributed by high precipitation supercell thunderstorms—within which tornadoes are often partially or fully wrapped in curtains of heavy rain, impairing them from being seen by storm spotters and chasers, law enforcement, and the public—due to an increase of moisture from proximity to the nearby Gulf of Mexico. Some areas of the region, such as Bossier City, average a slightly above normal rate of tornadoes when compared to the national average. The winter months are normally mild; Shreveport, in particular, averages 35 days of freezing or below-freezing temperatures per year. Ice and sleet storms occasionally occur during this timeframe. The summer months are hot and humid, with high to very high relative average humidity, often as a result of moisture being advected from the Gulf of Mexico; in Shreveport, maximum temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) an average of 91 days per year.

The National Weather Service (NWS) operates a Weather Forecast Office in Shreveport, which provides local weather forecasts and warnings, watches and advisories for hazardous weather conditions for 39 counties and parishes within the greater Ark-La-Tex region.

List of cities with over 3,500 people (in 2020):

The culture of the Ark-La-Tex region, and especially its music, shows a mixture of influences from the related, but distinct, cultures of its surrounding states. The music of the area is marked by country and blues sounds typical of the music of the Southern United States, the Western music of Texas, and the well-documented music of New Orleans and Acadiana in Louisiana.^[16][17] The area had a significant role in the development of country and rock-and-roll music, beginning in the 1940s. On March 1, 1948, Shreveport radio station KWKH launched a country music variety show called the Ark-La-Tex Jubilee, followed a month later by the long-running and influential Louisiana Hayride program.^[18] Hayride director Horace Logan and regular performer Webb Pierce started a music publishing company called Ark-La-Tex Music.^[19][20] Drummer Brian Blade, a Shreveport native, included a song entitled "Ark.La.Tex." on his 2014 album Landmarks, exploring the mixture of musical influences in his home region.^[21]

The region contains Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, one of four public universities unaffiliated with any of Texas's six university systems, and Louisiana Tech University, a public research university in Ruston, which are the largest public institutions of higher education in the Ark-La-Tex. Named after Stephen F. Austin, who led the second and most successful colonization of the region that would become the state of Texas through the migration of 300 families from other parts of the United States in 1825, the former of the two major universities was founded as a teachers' college in 1923 as a result of legislation authored by State Senator Wilfred Roy Cousins, Sr.^[22] Louisiana Tech opened in 1894 (as the Industrial Institute and College of Louisiana) to provide educational subjects pertaining to the arts and sciences for the development of an industrial economy in Louisiana post-Reconstruction.^[23] In the 1960s the school (then named Louisiana Polytechnic Institute) became desegregated, and allowed integrated classes with white and black students; after it achieved criteria of a research university under the leadership of President F. Jay Taylor, the university officially adopted its current name in 1970. Louisiana Tech also operates a satellite campus in Shreveport as well as classes at the Academic Success Center and Barksdale Air Force Base Instructional Site in Bossier City, and at the CenturyLink corporate headquarters in Monroe. Ruston is also home to a branch campus of Monroe-based Louisiana Delta Community College.

The Shreveport–Bossier City area is home to several colleges; among them, the Methodist-affiliated Centenary College of Louisiana (originally founded in the East Feliciana Parish town of Jackson in 1825, eventually relocating to Shreveport in 1908), Louisiana Baptist University and Theological Seminary (founded in 1973), Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport (opened in 1969 as the only medical school in northern Louisiana) and one of the largest nursing schools in northern Louisiana, the Northwestern State University College of Nursing (opened in 1949) as well as satellite campuses of Louisiana State University (opened as a two-year institution in 1967, and expanded into a four-year college in 1976), Southern University (opened in 1967 with a two-year associate's degree program). Longview, Texas, is home to LeTourneau University, a private, four-year Christian university founded by R.G. LeTourneau in 1946, originally as LeTourneau Technical Institute. Inclusively, Tyler, Texas is also home to satellite higher education campuses through the University of Texas System by way of the University of Texas at Tyler (opened in 1971 as Tyler State College) and the University of Texas Health Center at Tyler (opened in 1947 as the East Texas Tuberculosis Sanitarium and chartered into The University of Texas System in 1977 by the system's Board of Regents) as well as one of two independent institutions, Tyler Junior College (opened in 1926).

The Texarkana metropolitan area is home to Texas A&M University–Texarkana, a four-year satellite branch of the Texas A&M University System (founded as an upper-level extension college of East Texas State University in 1971), and Texarkana College (a public community college formed in 1927 as a branch of the Texarkana Independent School District and separated into an independent institution via a public vote in 1941). Arkadelphia is home to two liberal arts institutions: Henderson State University (founded in 1890 as Arkadelphia Methodist College), which is the only member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges based in Arkansas and announced plans to join the Arkansas State University System in October 2019,^[24][25] and Ouachita Baptist University, a private, Baptist college affiliated with the Arkansas Baptist State Convention (opened in 1886).

The area also houses several historically black colleges and universities (HBCU). The largest of these, Grambling State University, located in the namesake Lincoln Parish town of Grambling (four miles [6.4 km] west of the Louisiana Tech University campus), was founded in 1901 as the Colored Industrial and Agricultural School. The university was created out of the desire of African-American farmers in rural areas of northern Louisiana to educate other black residents in that section of the state; it moved to its present location in 1905 (as the North Louisiana Agricultural and Industrial School) and became a state junior college (renamed the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute) by 1928, when it began offering two-year professional certificates and diplomas to graduates. Grambling received accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) in 1949. Other HBCUs in the region include Texas College in Tyler (opened in 1894), Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins (a Christian-based HBCU founded in 1912), and Wiley College in Marshall (a private liberal arts college founded in 1873 by Methodist Episcopal Church Bishop Isaac Wiley and certified in 1882 by the Freedman's Aid Society, which is one of the oldest predominantly black colleges west of the Mississippi River).^[26]

• Athens Daily Review – Athens (Daily, except Sundays and Mondays)
• Bossier Press-Tribune – Bossier City (Bi-weekly)
• Coushatta Citizen - Coushatta (Daily/Morning)
• The Daily Sentinel – Nacogdoches (Daily/Morning)
• Longview News-Journal – Longview (Daily)
• Lufkin Daily News – Lufkin (Daily)
• Marshall News Messenger – Marshall (Daily/Morning)
• McCurtain County Gazette – Idabel (Daily/Morning)
• Natchitoches Times – Natchitoches (Daily/Morning)
• Ruston Daily Leader – Ruston (Daily, except Saturdays)
• Texarkana Gazette – Texarkana, AR (Daily/Morning)
• The Times – Shreveport (Daily/Morning)
• Tyler Morning Telegraph – Tyler (Daily/Morning)