Monroe — Louisiana | Shared Latitude

A Ouachita River town where Coca-Cola was first bottled and the bayou boardwalk fills with joggers at dusk. Lia and I spent an evening tracing the river walk and left with a strange new fact to repeat at every dinner party since.

We rolled into Monroe on a warm evening and parked near the river just as the light went gold over the Ouachita, which is wide and slow-moving here, more like a lake than a river in places. Lia had picked the town almost at random off the map because we needed a stopover between Natchitoches and Vicksburg, and neither of us expected to end up genuinely charmed by a mid-sized city we knew nothing about. It’s the twin of West Monroe across the water, and together they have the layered, unhurried feel of a place that isn’t performing for tourists.

The Biedenharn building and a Coca-Cola footnote

On Riverside Drive sits the old Biedenharn Candy Company building, where in 1894 Joseph Biedenharn became the first person in the world to bottle Coca-Cola, previously sold only as a fountain drink. The building is now a small museum with Bible-themed gardens attached, an odd but genuinely lovely combination, and the docent told us the story with the pride of someone repeating a hometown legend for the thousandth time and still meaning every word. Lia bought a glass-bottle Coke from the gift shop just to say she’d done it.

The historic Biedenharn Candy Company building where Coca-Cola was first bottled, in Monroe, Louisiana

Bayou DeSiard and the river walk

We spent our last hour at Bayou DeSiard, a cypress-lined waterway that loops through the University of Louisiana Monroe campus and past grand old homes with wraparound porches. The Ouachita River boardwalk downtown was busy with runners and families out for the evening air, and a couple of blues bars near the river had their doors propped open, guitar chords spilling onto the sidewalk. Antique Alley on Trenton Street, lined with old shopfronts turned into dealers’ stalls, was closed by the time we got there, which gave us a reason we didn’t need to come back.

Cypress trees reflected on the calm water of Bayou DeSiard in Monroe, Louisiana

Getting There

Monroe has its own regional airport (Monroe Regional, MLU) with flights connecting through Dallas and Atlanta. By car, it’s about two and a half hours east of Shreveport on I-20, or roughly four hours northwest of New Orleans. A car is essential for getting between the river district, the university side of town, and Antique Alley.