Lecompte was established in 1819 with the original name of White's Landing. The first railroad west of the Mississippi River was built from the Port of Alexandria on the Red River to White's Landing with a port on Bayou Boeuf. After the great successes of the racehorse Lecomte in 1854, the town changed its name to Lecomte, LA. In the early 20th Century, as the Texas & Pacific Railroad (now Union Pacific) built its depot and put the town on its maps, it misspelled the town's name as “Lecompte” by adding a “p”. And that became the conventional usage for the Town of Lecompte.