The Hotel Bentley

Joseph Bentley, the timber baron who built this hotel, lived in it until his death in 1938. During the Louisiana Maneuvers it became a headquarters for senior officers, and Omar Bradley, Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton and Joseph Stilwell are all linked to the hotel; Cary Grant, Roy Rogers and John Wayne also stayed. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 15, 1979. The hotel closed in December 2004 and was sold in October 2012 to a buyer who reopened it. Reported hauntings include footsteps in empty corridors and elevators that move by themselves.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — steps away
  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 — 2.3 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 — 4.7 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

• Thomas Courtland Manning — steps away
• Alexandria — steps away
• Red River — steps away
• Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback — steps away