Why was Fort Randolph Built?

Fort Randolph is named for Captain Christopher M. Randolph, who oversaw its construction in late 1864. After the Red River Campaign, General Edmund Kirby Smith saw the need for forts that could stop Union vessels from moving up the river past Alexandria, and he expected a third invasion in 1865. The fort had an outer ditch, an earthen citadel with gun positions, a magazine and bombproof shelters, and may have held four to eight guns. It sat on a hill above the rapids and joined the National Register on June 1, 1981.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Forts Randolph and Buhlow State Historic Site — steps away
  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 — 1.0 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 — 2.4 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 — 4.1 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

• Deserting soldiers and the end of the war — 0.2 mi
• The Red River Campaign — 0.2 mi
• Bailey's Dam — 0.2 mi
• Rapides Cemetery — 0.6 mi