Bailey's Dam

Maine loggers of the 29th Maine Infantry worked the east bank, while Black troops of the 97th and 99th U.S. Colored Infantry built rock-filled box cribs from the west bank, and four coal barges were sunk to fill a 150-foot gap. Work began April 28, 1864, with about 3,000 men. The dam opened May 8, and the gunboat Mound City breached it on May 13, letting the fleet below the falls. The site was listed on the National Register in 1976 and flooded by the John Overton Lock and Dam in 1987.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 0.2 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.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 0.8 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• 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 — 4.4 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

• The Red River Campaign — steps away
• Why was Fort Randolph Built? — 0.2 mi
• Deserting soldiers and the end of the war — 0.4 mi
• Rapides Cemetery — 0.5 mi