Camp Claiborne

Camp Claiborne began in 1930 as Camp Evangeline, named for the Evangeline District of Kisatchie National Forest, and was later renamed for Louisiana's first governor. In 1940 the Army carved it out of the forest, and more than 8,000 construction workers built it for about 14 million dollars. Over 500,000 men and women trained here before the war ended. By 1946 the Army no longer needed it; the buildings were dismantled and sold for scrap the following year, cattle grazed the old training grounds, and the land returned to the national forest.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 9.7 mi
  The Creole cottage Solomon Northup helped build for the man who enslaved him, moved twice and now a small museum on the LSU Alexandria campus.
• Valentine Lake Recreation Area — 15 mi
  A 46-acre Kisatchie National Forest lake dug by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s, with a campground and the head of the Wild Azalea Trail.
• Kent Plantation House — 16 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 17 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

More markers nearby

• Camp Claiborne, LA — steps away
• African-American Soldiers at Camp Claiborne — steps away
• Training At Camp Claiborne / Life At Camp Claiborne — steps away
• Camp Claiborne (Birthplace of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions) — 0.9 mi