McNary is a village in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, United States. It is part of the Alexandria, Louisiana, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 211 at the 2000 census.

McNary was acknowledged as a company lumber town that grew to a population of in the region of 3,000 in the vent of a hospital, several stores, a theater, and even a pool. When the lumber played out the lumber company purchased a town in Arizona and moved every mill operation to what was renamed as McNary, Arizona. The community in Louisiana struggled but has survived as an incorporated village.

By 1880 railroads were arriving and an industrial lumber boom began in Louisiana. Around 22 million acres were in virgin pine which was 85% of the state’s house area. There were as a consequence large virgin Cyprus stands but these were mainly in swamp or coastal marsh lands. McNary began, as taking into account many towns created along the railroads in Louisiana, as a lumber town. William M. Cady of Cady Lumber Company, along gone Alfred Smith and James McNary, established a lumber mill in McNary. A town of roughly 3000 sprang up with all the amenities of larger towns including a theater, hospital, and swimming pool. During the first share of the 1920s mills starting critical out. By 1923 the McNary reserves were depleted but what followed next-door was not abnormal of most mills. The Cady Lumber Company purchased the Apache Lumber Company, Ponderosa Pine leases, the Apache Railway, and the sawmill in Cooley, Arizona, then moved every ration of McNary mill in the same way as people in a twenty-one coach train. The extra lumber town would ascend be named McNary, Arizona. After the lumber mill left the area the community struggled but did not become a ghost town. In 1929 the town charter became inactive and it was not until 1965 that it was reactivated. Today parts of the Cady mill can still be seen in the area.

At the 2000 census, there were 211 people, 76 households and 56 families residing in the village. The population density was 116.1 inhabitants per square mile (44.8/km²). There were 93 housing units at an average density of 51.2 per square mile (19.8/km). The racial makeup of the village was 85.31% White, 10.43% African American, 0.47% Native American, 0.95% Asian, 2.84% from new races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.95% of the population.