Training At Camp Claiborne / Life At Camp Claiborne

Camp Claiborne trained railroad soldiers as well as infantry. The Claiborne-Polk Military Railroad, begun in September 1941, ran about 48 miles west to Camp Polk with roughly 25 bridges and a crossing of the Calcasieu River, so battalions could practice repairing track under wartime conditions. Its soldiers shipped to Iran in October 1942 to help operate the Trans-Iranian Railroad. Units called it the Crime and Punishment railroad because of old equipment and frequent derailments. Recruits lived first in tents, then in wooden hutments, with four service clubs and a guest house for visiting families.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Epps House: Solomon Northup's Gateway to Freedom — 9.7 mi
  The Creole cottage Solomon Northup helped build for the man who enslaved him, moved twice and now a small museum on the LSU Alexandria campus.
• Valentine Lake Recreation Area — 15 mi
  A 46-acre Kisatchie National Forest lake dug by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s, with a campground and the head of the Wild Azalea Trail.
• Kent Plantation House — 16 mi
  Rapides Parish's oldest known standing building, a Creole house with a February tour and a 2023 memorial that put the enslaved first.
• Arna Bontemps African American Museum — 17 mi
  The restored Alexandria house where the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps was born in 1902, on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail.

More markers nearby

• African-American Soldiers at Camp Claiborne — steps away
• Camp Claiborne, LA — steps away
• Camp Claiborne — steps away
• Camp Claiborne (Birthplace of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions) — 0.8 mi