Camp Claiborne (Birthplace of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions)

In May 1942 Sergeant Alvin C. York, the World War I Medal of Honor recipient, spoke to the 82nd Infantry Division at its first assembly at Camp Claiborne. Omar Bradley had reactivated the division here in March, and in August it was reconstituted as the Army's first airborne division under Brigadier General Matthew Ridgway. The 101st Airborne Division was then formed from a small group taken from the 82nd. The camp also trained combat engineers, railway battalions, forestry battalions and the 20th General Hospital, which the University of Pennsylvania organized.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 10 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 — 14 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

• Training At Camp Claiborne / Life At Camp Claiborne — 0.8 mi
• African-American Soldiers at Camp Claiborne — 0.8 mi
• Camp Claiborne, LA — 0.8 mi
• Camp Claiborne — 0.9 mi