John Watson: Pittsburg — A town of contrast

Pittsburg is the county seat of Camp County in Northeast Texas. It is 14 miles south of Mount Pleasant.

As you enter Pittsburg from the south on U.S. 271, it appears to be just another small East Texas farming community, population 4,347. Before you go very far into town you look off to the right and on a small rise is a huge mansion, rivaling anything you might expect to see in Hollywood. You blink twice, shake your head, and you are past it. You think, did I really see that, or was I imagining it?

As you drive on into town it is no different from many other small Texas towns. Most of the buildings downtown appear to be from the early 20th century. As in many older small towns, some of the buildings had advertising signs painted on their walls.

One sign that caught my attention was one with a clock face in the upper left corner with the face of a man wearing a top hat and holding up a drink bottle in the center of the clock face. The wording beside it read: “Drink a bite to eat at ten two and four, Dr Pepper, Good for Life; 5 cents at fountains and in bottles.”

As we pass through downtown I spot what I am looking for, the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Center and Museum. The museum is in the old Cotton Belt Railroad Depot. The depot building itself dates from 1901, when the railroads were the major form of transportation. At one time Pittsburg had two railroads running through town with eight passenger trains a day serving the town.

Pittsburg has always been a farming community, and the museum reflects that heritage. On one side of the large room is displayed a horse-drawn turning plow along with some dried cotton stalks and a large basket filled with open cotton bolls. In the center of the room is an old iron-wheeled Farmall tractor.

In another section is a small, wood-cased telephone switchboard beside a display of a dozen or so telephones, beginning with a wall-mounted crank telephone. No modern push-button telephones are on display.

There is also an early day print shop, set up with the wooden type trays and early day printing press. The Ezekiel flying machine is housed in a separate building.

Outside the museum is a caboose you can take a tour of, and a block away across the tracks is a large grain elevator with the Pilgrim Pride emblem at the top of it.

The museum consists of two separate entities. In addition to the depot complex is the early turn-of-the-century farmstead a couple of blocks away, a good walking distance. You can visit both places for one admission price.

The farmstead is typical of many early East Texas farmsteads with its 100-year-old farm house, barn and smokehouse. The house is furnished with many early period antiques.

Outside was an old hand-dug well with a bench nearby that has two washtubs and a rub-board sitting on it. Nearby was a cast-iron wash pot where people would heat the water to wash their clothes. A lot of old farm equipment is on display here, most of it horse drawn.

One thing you would always expect to find near a country home would be an outhouse, and one is here also.

Ald General Store at the farmstead contains the gift shop. As we started to leave I asked one of the ladies at the gift shop about the large mansion I had seen coming into town.

“Oh yes,” she replied. “That is the home of Bo Pilgrim.”

Pittsburg is home of the Pilgrim Pride Corporate Office. You would normally think of the offices of a large national corporation such as Pilgrim Pride as being in a large city such as Dallas, Houston or Chicago, not a sleepy little farm town like Pittsburg.

As we were leaving town we spotted what looked like a large bell tower sitting by itself in a little park area across from the Pilgrim Bank, so we stopped to check it out. It seems that this was the Witness Park and Prayer Tower.

The tower features four Paccard bells from France that chime every quarter hour. A chapel is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for public use. In the center of the walkway leading to the tower is a statue of Jesus washing Peter’s feet.

Pittsburg has all the charm and friendliness of a small town, along with a first class museum complex and is also home to one of our large national corporations.

John Watson is a

Cleburne resident who

can be reached at

texastraveler@sbcglobal.net.