Sci-Port Discovery Center

The Red River turns east through downtown Shreveport, and since 1998 a museum has held the riverbank at 820 Clyde Fant Parkway. Sci-Port Discovery Center is where Northwest Louisiana sends school buses and families who need a dry afternoon. The building houses interactive exhibits on physics, biology, engineering, and space — the kind of setups that ask you to move something, build something, watch what happens. An IMAX dome theater runs on a five-story screen. Thousands of eighth-graders have sat in those seats; thousands of parents have spent lunch money on admission because the forecast called for rain. It opened the year Shreveport was still counting on the riverfront to pull the city somewhere new. The building is still there. The exhibits still work. If you have children with you, or remember what it felt like to stand in a dark room and watch the stars project overhead, you go.