Fort Humbug

The decoy guns never had to fool a real attack. In spring 1864 a Union army under Nathaniel Banks and gunboats under David Dixon Porter pushed up the Red River toward Shreveport, then the Confederate capital of Louisiana. Richard Taylor beat Banks at Mansfield on April 8, and at Pleasant Hill the next day both sides lost about 1,600 men, yet Banks retreated, citing low water, scarce forage and quarrels among his officers. Shreveport was never reached, so the fort's fame rests on a fight that did not come.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Shreveport Municipal Auditorium — 1.8 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.
• Spring Street Museum — 1.8 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 Water Works Museum — 2.3 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.
• R. W. Norton Art Gallery — 3.0 mi
  A free art museum and 40 acres of azalea gardens in Shreveport, founded in 1946 on Rodessa oil money, with Remington and Russell, an Audubon folio and no photography allowed.

More markers nearby

• Pete Youree Confederate Monument — 0.5 mi
• Coates Bluff — 0.5 mi
• Masonic Temple — 1.1 mi
• Centenary College of Louisiana — 1.2 mi