Rapides Cemetery

Rapides Cemetery began as the public burial ground beside a Spanish military post dated to 1722 or 1723, and was in use by about 1769. A Daughters of the American Revolution marker credits a Franciscan mission of 1711 here; the records trace the site only to the post. The Rapides Cemetery Association formed in 1872 to clean and maintain the grounds. Burials include Pierre Baillio, builder of Kent House; George M. Graham, called the father of LSU; Governor James Madison Wells; and U.S. Senator John R. Thornton. The cemetery was listed on the National Register on June 15, 1979.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 0.6 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 0.6 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.
• Kent Plantation House — 2.6 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum — 4.3 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.

More markers nearby

• The Jewish Cemetery — steps away
• Red River — 0.4 mi
• The Hotel Bentley — 0.4 mi
• Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback — 0.4 mi