Walker, Louisiana

Before it was Walker, the settlement was Milton Old Field, named for Michael Milton, who arrived in 1825 from the Amite River landing now called Denham Springs with his wife, Martha Clark Milton, and several servants; accounts differ on whether they were enslaved or indentured. Old field meant open, cleared ground good for grazing. Milton developed 343 acres from a land grant for his War of 1812 service. In 1890 the post office was renamed for Dr. William Elliott Walker, a state legislator from Springfield and a Confederate lieutenant colonel. Walker became a city in 2011.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tickfaw State Park — 16 mi
  A floodplain park on the Tickfaw River, with cypress-tupelo swamp, bottomland hardwoods and about 4.75 miles of trails and boardwalks, plus a nature center with an 800-gallon river aquarium.
• LSU Rural Life Museum — 16 mi
  Four slave cabins moved from Welham Plantation and a working-plantation row of more than twenty saved buildings, on land the Burden family held as Windrush plantation since the 1830s.
• Capitol Park Museum — 19 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.
• Louisiana State Capitol — 19 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.

More markers nearby

• Historic Denham Springs — 5.5 mi
• Denham Springs — 5.9 mi
• Livingston Parish — 6.7 mi
• Watson — 8.1 mi