Bailey's Dam Site

About this property

Bailey's Dam was a timber dam on the Red River in Alexandria, Louisiana. It was built in 1864 during the Red River Campaign in the American Civil War. It was planned by Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey to afford passage over the Alexandria rapids for part of Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter's Mississippi River Squadron. The dam successfully raised the level of the river and was then breached in order to allow the boats in its reservoir to pass downstream. The Red River was an important transportation corridor through Louisiana, where the river channel meandered through alluvium. A short distance upstream of Alexandria, the river crosses two ledges of sandstone and siltstone. The depth of water over these bedrock ledges was less than the channel depth through nearby alluvium, and the downstream ledge controlled the water level upstream of that ledge. During the Red River Campaign in March 1864, General Nathaniel P. Banks and his Union troops moved north along the Red River in order to capture Shreveport. Accompanying them was Rear Admiral David D. Porter who was in command of the Mississippi River Squadron. The levels of the river were unseasonably low, perhaps due to a multi-year drought, and made passage for the boats difficult when they reached the Alexandria falls. Porter could only move 12 gunboats and 20 transports north of the falls after waiting for the level to become high enough. The rest of the fleet would wait behind. After being defeated by Confederate General Richard Taylor and failing to capture Shreveport in the Battle of Mansfield on April 8, General Banks and the Union troops were now retreating back south along the Red River. Taylor's troops were in pursuit of them and harassing them with gunfire. Porter's flotilla managed to navigate the river but with difficulty. By April 28, the flotilla reached the Alexandria falls, although the river was too low at 3 feet and 4 inches. Porter's boats lightened their loads but needed 7 feet of water to pass. They did not have time to wait for the river level to rise. The chief engineer of the 19th Corps, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Bailey, suggested that a wing dam should be built in order to raise the river level and free the boats. Bailey had constructed dams in Wisconsin as a lumberman and was familiar with how one could solve the problem. Although other officers criticized Bailey for the idea, General Banks agreed to it and ordered the construction. Construction soon began supervised by Bailey. Around 3,000 soldiers started to fell trees and bring rock, brick, stone and other materials to the construction site. As construction progressed, two wings of the dam developed from either shore of the 758-foot-wide (231 m) river. The dam was at the bottom of the downstream ledge and was built with local materials. Where trees were plentiful on the left (east) side of the river, men with logging experience from the 29th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment used those trees for dam-building. Freed slaves of the 97th and 99th United States Colored Infantry Regiments worked from the right bank building box cribs filled with rocks and stones. The dam was built with 4 x 10 inch wooden timbers that were stacked parallel with the river. The upstream tops of the timbers were anchored with stone while their trunks were raised higher by timbers that were perpendicular to the river. This helped support the dam and make it stronger as a reservoir filled in behind. The rock-crib structure did not cross the entire river and four coal barges were sunk in between the dam's 150-foot (46 m) gap. The barges were filled with local material and anchored into the riverbed. Bailey directed that one of the barges only be partially filled as he planned to quickly remove it in order to allow the reservoir to empty and the flotilla to pass.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Rapides County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Rapides County.

More historic places in Louisiana

Browse all historic places in Louisiana.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Louisiana history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.