Fort DeRussy State Historic Site

The earthworks rise from Red River bottomland four miles north of Marksville, built in 1862 to defend the lower valley. The fort took its name from Colonel Lewis G. DeRussy, the oldest West Point graduate to serve in the Confederate Army — a New York-born engineer first stationed in Louisiana in 1826, where he lived nearly forty years. After service in the Mexican War and a civilian career as a prominent engineer, he also ran a cotton plantation and served in the state house and senate in the 1850s. When the war came, he returned to uniform and oversaw construction of the fortifications. He died of a heart attack at his plantation in December 1864. A portion of Rear Admiral David D. Porter's Mississippi Squadron captured the fort on May 5, 1863. The USS Benton destroyed parts of it four days later. The garrison's remnants surrendered to General A. J. Smith's Union Army on March 14, 1864. The fort's fall opened the Red River to Union gunboats advancing toward Shreveport. The property was designated a state historic site in 1994. The colonel's remains were exhumed from an abandoned grave and reinterred on the grounds on September 26, 1999. The fort and water battery were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. The seventy-acre site preserves some of the most intact Civil War earthworks in Louisiana. The American Battlefield Trust and partners have acquired and preserved eighty acres of the battlefield in three transactions since 1999. The site is undeveloped — wear boots and bring bug spray.