Fort De Russy

The marker stands at the Marksville courthouse, but the earthwork lies about four miles north. It was named for Lewis G. DeRussy, a career engineer and the oldest West Point graduate to serve the Confederacy, and it was built in 1862. Porter's gunboats had taken it once already, in May 1863. On March 14, 1864, A. J. Smith's men attacked in the evening; Wikipedia's battle account has a charge near 6:30 p.m., 350 defenders under William Byrd and 317 captured. The fort became a state historic site in 1994 and joined the National Register in 2016.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Avoyelles Parish Courthouse: Solomon Northup Marker — steps away
  The Marksville courthouse where Solomon Northup was freed in January 1853, with a marker and a 2026 bronze that shows him rising from the mud.
• Tunica-Biloxi Museum — 1.1 mi
  The Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana's own museum at Marksville, built around the Tunica Treasure that the tribe won back in court.
• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 21 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.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 26 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

• Louisiana's Atchafalaya Basin — steps away
• The First Bowie Knife — steps away
• Solomon Northup, "Twelve Years a Slave" — steps away
• Founding Of Marksville — steps away