Camp Beauregard — Louisiana Maneuvers Site

Four hundred thousand troops moved across central Louisiana in 1940, the largest war games the United States had run before entering the Second World War. Camp Beauregard near Pineville anchored the Louisiana Maneuvers, and the men who led divisions through the pine forests and creek bottoms — Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley — would carry what they learned here into North Africa, France, and Germany. The camp is still an active Louisiana National Guard training site. The Louisiana Maneuvers and Military Museum stands on post, free to visit, though you'll need to coordinate base access in advance. What you're looking at when you walk the grounds is where the U.S. Army rehearsed for a war it hadn't yet entered, testing armor doctrine and mechanized movement in terrain that wouldn't forgive guesswork. The museum holds the artifacts. The land still holds the scale.