Confederate Navy Yard

The Missouri was built to be an ironclad and spent her life waiting. Her keel was laid in December 1862 and she was launched on April 14, 1863, armored with railroad T-rails about 4.5 inches thick spiked over 23 inches of yellow pine. She carried three guns and never saw combat, because low water kept her near Shreveport during the Red River Campaign and fuel ran short. She reached Alexandria on April 8, 1865, and Carter surrendered her there on June 3, the last Confederate ironclad to surrender. She was sold for scrap at Mound City, Illinois, that November.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Shreveport Water Works Museum — 0.3 mi
  An 1887 brick pumping station on McNeill Street where Worthington steam pumps ran until 1980, now a free museum and a National Historic Landmark.
• Spring Street Museum — 0.5 mi
  An 1866 bank building downtown that also held a Freedman's Savings and Trust branch in 1870, now a free LSUS-run museum with a Victorian parlor and the original vault.
• Shreveport Municipal Auditorium — 0.8 mi
  The Art Deco hall of 1929 where the Louisiana Hayride went out over KWKH from 1948 to 1960 and where Elvis Presley first played Shreveport on October 16, 1954.
• Louisiana State Exhibit Museum — 3.3 mi
  A circular Art Deco museum of 1939 on the Shreveport fairgrounds, with a 1,000-year-old Caddo log boat, rotunda murals and dioramas of early Caddo Parish.

More markers nearby

• First Commercial Use of Natural Gas in Louisiana — steps away
• First City Market — 0.5 mi
• Cane & Bennett's Trading Post — 0.5 mi
• Shreve Memorial Library — 0.5 mi