Red River

The Great Raft, a log jam more than 160 miles long, stood on the Red River for almost two millennia. Henry Miller Shreve reached its toe in April 1833 with four snag boats and 159 men, and the channel was cleared to Twelvemile Bayou by April 1835. Tradition holds that the raft once reached down to the falls at Alexandria, the rapids that later stranded Union gunboats. When settlers arrived it ended at Campti, which made Natchitoches the head of navigation. Remnants stayed on the banks, and the raft began to re-form.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 0.2 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 — 0.9 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 — 2.4 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 — 4.7 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

• Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback — steps away
• Thomas Courtland Manning — steps away
• Alexandria — steps away
• The Hotel Bentley — steps away