East of Shreveport, the old US-80 highway winds through dozens of somnolent little towns, following the rolling land while crisscrossing back and forth under the high-speed I-20 freeway. After passing the pawn shops and girlie bars outside Barksdale Air Force Base, the route parallels railroad tracks along the remains of a historic log turnpike, built in the 1870s to provide all-weather passage across the muddy bogs and bayous.
Apart from the usual barrage of roadside businesses, there’s not a lot to stop for until you reach the tiny town of Gibsland (pop. 1,119), just south of I-20, 45 miles east of Shreveport. This pleasantly unremarkable little hamlet has one unique claim to fame: It was here, in 1934, that the notorious Depression-era gangsters Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker (aka Bonnie and Clyde) were ambushed and killed. A small, town-run museum tells their story, and sells gruesome postcards of their bullet-riddled bodies, while every May locals dress up and stage gun battles and car chases—more for cops-and-robbers fun than out of any real dedication to historical accuracy.
A battered stone marker, eight miles south of Gibsland along Hwy-154, stands on the site where the desperate duo—who in “real life” were nasty, cold-blooded murderers, nothing like the romantic pair played by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in the Hollywood movie—were shot by state troopers.
