Camp Moore, served as the training camp for more than 20,000 southern soldiers during the Civil War. The pine-tree-covered site near the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railroad line was receiving Confederate trainees by May 1861. Although the precise boundaries of the original camp are not known, today the site includes approximately 450 acres, situated near the town of Kentwood along US 51.

Named for Louisiana Governor Thomas Overton Moore, Camp Moore was a tent city with only a few permanent buildings, none of which survive. More than 400 soldiers died during training here, the majority of them from various diseases, including an 1862 measles epidemic. At a later date, 150 gravestones were added, but they do not necessarily mark exact gravesites. Two Union raids in 1864 destroyed the camp.

A statue of a Confederate soldier, carved from Italian white marble, was placed here in 1907. The Camp Moore Confederate Museum, built in 1965 to resemble a Creole antebellum residence, houses a collection of Civil War artifacts. Also on the site is the log cabin that served as the initial meeting place of the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Adapted from Karen Kingsley’s Buildings of Louisiana, part of the Buildings of the United States series commissioned by the Society of Architectural Historians (www.sah.org) and published by Oxford University Press.