Headquarters Department of the Gulf / Headquarters Trans-Mississippi Dept.

Nathaniel Banks, who commanded the Union Department of the Gulf, was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1816. He left school at fourteen and was known as the Bobbin Boy, yet won the Speakership of the U.S. House in 1856 on the 133rd ballot and served as governor from 1858. As a general he lost to Stonewall Jackson in the Valley and failed twice at Port Hudson. After Mansfield Grant asked for his removal. Banks returned to Congress, helped fund the Alaska Purchase and died in Waltham in 1894.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mansfield State Historic Site — 14 mi
  A 1957 museum and three-quarter-mile trail on the ground where Confederate troops broke a Union line on April 8, 1864, in a park begun by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
• Los Adaes State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The Spanish presidio that was the capital of Texas from 1729 to 1770, some 15 miles from French Natchitoches, now an archaeological site where Native pottery is the most abundant find.
• Fort Jesup State Historic Site — 18 mi
  The 1822 army post Zachary Taylor built to hold the Neutral Ground between Louisiana and Spanish Texas, with the one surviving kitchen, a reconstructed officers' quarters and a museum open Friday to Sunday.
• North Toledo Bend State Park — 23 mi
  A 900-acre park on the Louisiana shore of the 186,000-acre Toledo Bend Reservoir, with trails, disc golf and cabins, near the flooded sites of Pine Flat and other Sabine Parish communities.

More markers nearby

• The Old Cistern — steps away
• Pleasant Hill Battle Park — steps away
• The Village of Pleasant Hill — steps away
• Leutenant General Richard Taylor — 0.3 mi