The Foot of Red Hill

The storm that gave this corner its history struck on the evening of April 4, 1923. It came from the northwest, crossed north Alexandria and ran up Pineville's Main Street in a path about 100 yards wide. Accounts of the dead range from 13 to 20, Black and white residents of Pineville and nearby sawmill settlements. One survey counted 142 structures struck, 46 of them in Pineville, and the Louisiana College power plant was wrecked. Most buildings were wood frame, which a local writer blames for the toll.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — 0.8 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 — 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 — 2.9 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 — 4.0 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

• Mount Olivet Cemetery and Chapel — steps away
• The Jewish Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• Alexandria National Cemetery — 0.3 mi
• Rapides Cemetery — 0.3 mi