Editing Ouachita Parish, Louisiana (section)

===Post-Reconstruction to present===
Following the [[Reconstruction era]], as white Democrats regained control of the state government, they increasingly worked to re-establish dominance over the [[freedmen]] in Ouachita Parish. Elections were often won by intimidation and fraud, and they worked to establish [[white supremacy]]. Particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, [[Lynching in the United States|lynchings]] mostly of black men by white mobs in Ouachita and across the South were a form of racial terror by which the whites enforced their dominance. A 2015 study of lynchings found that from 1877 to 1950, a total of 38 people were lynched in Ouachita Parish.<ref name="eji">[https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf  "Supplement: Lynchings by County/ Louisiana: Ouachita ", 3rd edition] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023063004/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf |date=October 23, 2017 }}, from ''Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror'', 2015, Equal Justice Institute, Montgomery, Alabama</ref> This was the third-highest total in the state,<ref name="eji"/> and the fifth-highest total of lynchings of any county in the South.<ref name="causey">[http://www.thenewsstar.com/story/news/local/2015/02/24/ouachita-parishs-bloody-past-appears-lynching-study/23955319/ Kaleb Causey, "Ouachita Parish's bloody past appears in lynching study"], ''News-Star,'' February 24, 2015; accessed August 20, 2016</ref> Among the victims was George Bolden, an illiterate black man "accused of writing a lewd note to a white woman". Before he went to trial, he was lynched near Monroe on April 30, 1919.<ref name="causey"/>

In 1883, the first railroad bridge across the Ouachita River was built, improving connections for the town with other markets.

In 1916, the Monroe [[natural gas field]] was discovered. The field stretched more than  {{convert|500|sqmi|km2|sigfig=1}} and was estimated to have {{convert|6500000000000|cuft|km3|sigfig=2}} of natural gas in it. As a result, for a time the city of Monroe was known as the natural gas capital of the world. The new industry generated many jobs. From 1920 to 1930, the population of Ouachita Parish increased by more than 79 percent, to 54,000 people, as migrants arrived for work. (see Demographics section and table.)

The town of [[Sterlington, Louisiana|Sterlington]] was incorporated in August 1961, and in 1974 the town of [[Richwood, Louisiana|Richwood]] was incorporated. Ouachita Parish's boundaries have changed 23 times during its history, mostly due to the formation of other parishes in the 19th century.