Town of Zachary

The town took its name from Darel Zachary, a farmer who lived from 1827 to 1907 and sold his land to the Illinois Central Railroad, which built a track and depot. A post office opened in 1885 and Zachary was incorporated on August 2, 1889, with Thomas Edward McHugh as first mayor. A fire devastated the village in 1903; the 1898 Allison House is the oldest surviving building, apart from the depot. In 1966 Jack Breaux became the first Republican elected mayor in Louisiana since Reconstruction.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Port Hudson State Historic Site — 8.6 mi
  The 48-day siege of 1863 on the Mississippi bluffs, where the Louisiana Native Guards and Captain Andre Cailloux led the first assault; earthworks, a six-mile trail and a museum.
• Louisiana State Capitol — 13 mi
  A 450-foot Art Deco tower Huey Long pushed through in 1930, finished in 14 months, and the hallway where he was shot in 1935; free to enter and ringed by 27 acres of grounds.
• Capitol Park Museum — 14 mi
  The Louisiana State Museum in Baton Rouge: a shrimp trawler and a Civil War submarine, galleries on the slave market, resistance and Jim Crow, and the music from Armstrong to Chenier.
• Old State Capitol — 14 mi
  James Dakin's 1850 Gothic castle on the river bluff, gutted in the Civil War, nearly demolished in 1991 and reopened in 1994 as a free museum of political history.

More markers nearby

• The First West Florida Convention, 1810 — 2.6 mi
• Town of Baker — 4.0 mi
• Battle of the Plains Store — 4.4 mi
• Port Hudson National Cemetery — 7.4 mi