Jefferson Highway

The Jefferson Highway, nicknamed the Palm to Pine Highway, was an auto trail inspired by the Lincoln Highway, and its original route was finalized in December 1916. In Louisiana it ran from New Orleans through Baton Rouge to Port Allen, crossed the Atchafalaya River by ferry to Melville, and went through Bunkie and Cheneyville to Alexandria. From Pineville it continued to Natchitoches and Shreveport. The state numbered the route State Route 1 in 1921, and the U.S. numbered highways replaced it in the 1920s. The southern terminus obelisk in New Orleans was dedicated in January 1919.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 1.8 mi
  Two Confederate earthen forts on the Red River at Pineville, built with enslaved labor and never attacked, beside the remains of Bailey's Dam.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 2.4 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 2.5 mi
  A National Guard museum in a replica WWII barracks at Camp Beauregard, built around the huge 1940-41 war games in Central Louisiana. Free.
• Kent Plantation House — 4.1 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.

More markers nearby

• Central Louisiana State Hospital Cemetery — 0.9 mi
• Louisiana College — 0.9 mi
• Alexandria National Cemetery — 1.3 mi
• State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy — 1.5 mi