The Dam Works

The dam was an exercise in arithmetic. When Porter's flotilla reached the falls on April 28, the river stood at 3 feet 4 inches and the boats needed 7. Joseph Bailey, who had built dams as a Wisconsin lumberman, proposed a wing dam; other officers criticized the idea, but General Banks approved it. Spanning 758 feet of river with a 150-foot gap, it raised the water to 4 feet by May 6 and past 5 feet by May 8, enough for the smaller boats. A Corps of Engineers excavation in 1984 helped confirm how it was built.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 0.2 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 — 0.8 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.
• Kent Plantation House — 2.3 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 — 4.4 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 Red River Campaign — steps away
• Bailey's Dam — steps away
• Why was Fort Randolph Built? — 0.2 mi
• Deserting soldiers and the end of the war — 0.4 mi