Kinder became known as "The Crossroads to Everywhere" through a long history as a meeting place where goods, ideas, and cultures came together. Near an important fork of the Calcasieu River, it served early explorers, trappers, traders, and settlers as a center of river commerce and a waypoint for travel to larger cities. It also lay along a cattle-driving route from Lake Charles to Alexandria, where herds often stopped before continuing to an important beef market with railroad connections beyond Louisiana. During the Civil War, Kinder stood on a main Confederate supply route from Texas to Opelousas and offered a welcome halfway point for weary troops moving from Niblett's Bluff. Residents later recalled wartime hardships through stories such as that of Becky Fruge, who, after her brother Jack returned home on furlough and discovered Union foragers nearby, put on his Confederate uniform, rode away on the family horse Finefoot, and drew the pursuing soldiers from the farm while her mother Sally hid him in the attic; in later years Becky also ran a ferry across Bayou Nezpique, took in an abandoned baby, and became known as Aunt Becky for her generosity. The wider settlement of the area reflected several migrations: Acadians, encouraged by Spanish land grants after Spain gained Louisiana, settled across the prairie and along rivers and bayous; homesteaders from Mississippi, Arkansas, and other parts of Louisiana used the Homestead Act to establish small farms linked by trade; and African-Americans, drawn by timber work after railroads opened the pine forests, built homes, churches, and schools in nearby communities such as Hickory Flats. By 1880 a railroad connecting Lake Charles and New Orleans was complete, Jabez Bunting Watkins then worked to build a line from Lake Charles to Alexandria, bought land from James Kinder, and made the town a stop on the Watkins, Kansas City, and Gulf Railroad; in 1911 the Gulf Coast/Frisco Line also stopped there, strengthening Kinder as a shipping and transportation hub. Its crossroads position again made it important in 1941, when the Louisiana Maneuvers used the town as an ideal staging point because rail lines and highways allowed forces to move quickly in any direction. The town itself took shape after James A. Kinder, a Union veteran from Mississippi who moved to Louisiana around 1870, built a home and store there in 1885 on 138.77 acres he received through the Homestead Act of 1862, and his store became the focus of the surrounding community and gave the settlement its name.