Alexandria

The two cities face each other across the Red River, and the older settlement is Pineville's, which grew around a military post of 1722 or 1723. Alexandria is named for Alexander Fulton, the Pennsylvania businessman for whom the park around this marker is also named. A ferry joined the towns until a bridge opened in 1900. After Civil War losses of public records, a new charter in 1868 gave Alexandria a mayor and a nine-member council, and the 1912 Lawrason Act brought a strong-mayor system. Its population peaked at 51,648 in 1980.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — steps away
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 0.9 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.
• Kent Plantation House — 2.3 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 4.8 mi
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.

More markers nearby

• Thomas Courtland Manning — steps away
• Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback — steps away
• Red River — steps away
• The Hotel Bentley — steps away