This is a map from C.W.R. Bayley’s 1853 New and Improved Map of Louisiana. During this time there were quite a few steamboats in the area and there were a total of five lakes during this time frame (Soda Lake, Shifttail Lake, Clear Lake, Caddo Lake and Cross Lake). If anyone has any old maps, please let me know. We always like to share.
Cross Lake Shreveport 
I recently came across the mention of a Lake Pelourde, in Louisiana, in the Civil War writings of Augustine Joseph Hickey Duganne, a war officer from Massachusetts Volunteers, in 1853, in his book, “Camps and Prisons: Twenty Months in the Department of the Gulf”.
There is another similar mention by a Boston Officer in “ History of the Forty-second regiment
infantry, Massachusetts volunteers, “ 1863, by Charles P. Bosson.
In Duganne’s mémoire, he describes a town called Pelourde and also a lake adjacent to Lake Pelourde, namely Flat Lake near Brashear and Houma, LA. However, I cannot find Lake Pelourde—but did find Lake Palourde. Sadly, I think the name was changed to Lake Palourde, in error, believing it to have been the root of the French word palourde, which is a “clam”.
It is a myth and mistake made by one very popular US genealogy website, which to this day—though they have never studied or researched the name of my ancestors—they continue to make, which suggests the name Plourde may have derived from a French coastal settlers who ate and harvested clams (palourde).
But this is not the root of the French name of my paternal ancestors, René Pelourde—who changed his name sometime when arriving in Quebec province in 1692. Even a rudimentary research would have discovered that the Pelourde family has been around since at least the 1st century, as Pelourde/Pellourde/Pellorde.
They were families of nobility who worked for more than 400 years for at least five French kings; and are mentioned in more than 100 historical accounts and encyclopedias in France. The family name and their inter-marriages were so popular that they are mentioned by Pliny the Elder, (70 AD) the Roman writer, in their relationship to the de la Monnoye family.
I accidentally sent it off before finishing..
I wrote this to ask whether you know when the name of the Lake Palourde was changed? it was obviously being called Lake Pelourde in 1863 when A.J. H. Duganne wrote his account as a POW. Any help would be appreciated. My belief is that it was initially named after a Pelourde family member, maybe an Acadian who had fled from Acadia or Quebec…