Name: Pittsburg, Texas
Address: Pittsburg, TX

Pittsburg, TX RoadyGoat

Pittsburg is a place where the land shapes the people. Drive through the county and you'll see it – row after row of chicken houses, stretching as far as the eye can see. Poultry is king here. It's not just a job; it's woven into the fabric of the town. Families have been raising chickens for generations, some starting back when the industry first took hold in Northeast Texas. The sandy soil, well-drained and slightly acidic, isn't ideal for many crops, but it's perfect for building poultry houses. The abundance of loblolly pines also played a role – providing readily available lumber for construction. What began as a few farmers supplementing their income eventually blossomed into a major industry. Pittsburg became a hub, drawing in processing plants and related businesses. It's a demanding way of life, but it provides a stable livelihood for many families. You can feel the impact of agriculture throughout town, from the bustling feed stores to the friendly faces you see at the local diner. It's why Pittsburg feels like home to so many people.

The Pre-Wright Brothers Flight of Pittsburg RoadyGoat

Here in Pittsburg, you're in the home of one of aviation's most curious tales. In 1902, a year before the Wright Brothers' famous flight at Kitty Hawk, a local inventor and Baptist minister named Burrell Cannon claimed to have achieved flight. Funded by a group of local investors calling themselves the Ezekiel Airship Company, Cannon built a craft based on his reading of the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible. It was a wild machine, with a lightweight frame, fabric-covered paddle wheels for wings, and a four-cylinder gasoline engine. According to local legend, on a Sunday that November, with Cannon away preaching, a foundry worker named Gus Stamps and a few fellow workers rolled the machine out to a cow pasture just outside of town to try it. It rose about ten or twelve feet off the ground, drifted sideways toward a fence, and when the engine began shaking hard, Stamps cut the power and brought it to rest about a hundred and sixty feet from where it started. The story is unverified, a piece of local folklore. But you can see a full-scale, meticulously built replica of this incredible machine at the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Museum downtown and decide for yourself.

A Lake Named for the Man Who Willed It RoadyGoat

1966

About six miles southwest of Mount Pleasant, Big Cypress Creek widens into a 9,460-acre reservoir known as Lake Bob Sandlin. As early as the 1950s local leaders wanted a lake here to secure the region's water and draw industry. On February 19, 1966, the Titus County Fresh Water Supply District No. 1 was formed, and businessman and civic leader Bob Sandlin was named its president. Property acquisition began in 1973, and in 1974 crews started building Fort Sherman Dam, named for a Republic of Texas frontier fort built near the site in December 1838. The earthfill dam runs 10,800 feet long and stands 69 feet at its highest. The state-owned project cost about 32 million dollars. The lake was dedicated on June 25, 1978, and named for the man who championed it. Today it is prized as a top East Texas bass fishery, with Lake Bob Sandlin State Park on its shore.

7.0 mi away

Shelby, Carroll Hall

1923

Born on January 11, 1923, in Leesburg, Camp County, Texas, Carroll Hall Shelby was a famous automobile driver and designer and, prior to his death, one of the world's longest-living heart transplant recipients. He was the only son of Warren Hall Shelby and Francis Etoise (Lawrence) Shelby and older brother to Lou Ann "Anne" (Shelby) Ellison. His father was a U. S. postal worker and car buff who did his rounds by automobile. As a child Shelby sometimes accompanied him on these post rounds as well as to local auto races. He spent his first seven years in Leesburg and then moved with his family to Dallas. At a very young age Shelby was diagnosed with a heart murmur and was required to take daily bed rest for most of his childhood. Upon graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in Dallas in 1940, Shelby enrolled at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he entered the aeronautical engineering program, but never completed his degree. He enlisted in the U. S. Army Air Corps on April 11, 1941. Shelby completed his basic training at Randolph Air Force Base and was posted to Kelly Field (later named Kelly Air Force Base ), Cuero Field , Perrin Army Air Field , Ellington Field , and Childress Army Air Field . He served as a flight instructor and test pilot for the Beechcraft AT-11 Kansan and Curtiss AT-9 Jeep. In 1942 Shelby graduated as a staff sergeant at Ellington Field. Later that year he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He left the service in August 1945. Two years prior, on December 18, 1943, Shelby married his first wife, Vivian Jeanne Fields, who mothered his three children, Sharon Anne (born in 1944), Michael Hall (born in 1946), and Patrick Bert (born in 1947). Shelby and his wife divorced sixteen years later in February 1960. By the time of his death, Shelby had married at least six other women: Janet R. "Jan" Harrison (in 1962), Sue Stafford (in 1963), Sandra Brandstetter, Cynthia Psaros (in 1989), Helena Dahl (1990-97), and Cleo Patra Roberts (1997-2012). In 1949 Shelby went into business raising chickens. His first batch of chickens gave him a $5,000 profit, but a subsequent batch was devastated by disease and bankrupted him. In January 1952 Shelby entered his first race, a quarter-mile drag meet in which he drove a flathead Ford V8-powered hot rod built by Ed Wilkins, a friend from high school. Later that year Wilkins drove up to his home in an MG TC and invited him to drive the car in a drag meet in Norman, Oklahoma, where Shelby won two races. On November 23 Shelby won the Texas Region of the Sports Car Club of America race at Caddo Mills. In August 1953, during a race at Eagle Mountain National Guard Base near Fort Worth, he drove in a pair of striped bib overalls, which became his signature outfit. In January 1954 he drove the Mil Kilometros de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires, sponsored by the Automobile Club of Argentina, where he caught the eye of John Wyer, the team manager of Aston Martin. Later that year Shelby drove DBR3s for Aston Martin in several races, including the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. In November 1954 he was badly injured during the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico. He continued to drive in early 1955 with his arm in a cast and his hand taped to the steering wheel. From 1955 to 1957 Shelby won more than half of the eighty-one races he entered, set multiple records, and traveled the world. In 1956 he was sponsored by John Edgar, for whom he drove Ferraris and Maseratis. In both 1956 and 1957 Shelby was featured as Sports Illustrated magazine's Driver of the Year. In early 1957 he partnered with Dick Hall, a former sponsor, to open Carroll Shelby Sports Cars of Dallas. That September, while driving Edgar's 4.5-liter Maserati 450S during practice for the Riverside International Raceway in California, Shelby spun it into a dirt embankment. After the accident he had to have plastic surgery on his face and three vertebrae fused in his neck. In November he memorably won the 100-mile rac

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Ezekiel Airship, The

1902

Baptist minister and inventor Burrell Cannon (1848-1922) led some Pittsburg investors to establish the Ezekiel airship Company and build a craft described in the Biblical book of Ezekiel. The ship had large, fabric-covered wings powered by an engine that turned four sets of paddles. It was built in a nearby machine shop and was briefly airborne at this site late in 1902, a year before the Wright brothers first flew. Enroute to the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, the airship was destroyed by a storm. In 1913 a second model crashed, and the Rev. Cannon gave up the project. (1976)

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Pilgrim, Lonnie Alfred [Bo]

1946

Lonnie Alfred "Bo" Pilgrim, chicken magnate and philanthropist, the son of Alonzo Monroe Pilgrim and Nettie Gertrude (Gunn) Pilgrim, was born on May 8, 1928, in Pine, Texas, a small community in Camp County and just south of the county seat of Pittsburg. He was the fourth of seven children who survived infancy. His father owned one of the two stores in Pine but died suddenly in 1939. His mother took over the store, which was later passed on to Pilgrim's oldest brother, Harold. Young Lonnie Pilgrim, who always went by the nickname Bo, had a religious conversion about this time and became a devout Southern Baptist for the rest of his life. He later described his sense of betrayal when his mother remarried three years after his father's death, and he elected to live with his grandmother, Ada, despite the poverty he experienced working on her farm. There, he had his first experience raising chickens. For a time, beset by financial woes, Pilgrim drove a truck that carried supplies for moonshiners. In 1946 Pilgrim's older brother Aubrey and a partner, Pat Johns, purchased the feed store of Johns's uncle in nearby Pittsburg and began what eventually evolved into Pilgrim's Pride Corporation. The enterprise began as a small, overly leveraged, general service, agricultural supplies shop. Concerned about the debt, Johns sold out his $500-portion of the business within the first year, and Aubrey brought on his brother Bo. Aubrey Pilgrim, hauled gravel for the business, minded the store, and often worked sixteen-hour days. The ideas of younger brother Bo, however, soon began to drive the business. His suggestions and alacrity as a low-cost builder led to the construction of a warehouse, a loading ramp, an unloading pit, and an elevator to carry feed to a bagging machine. A Pittsburg dentist, L. H. Pitts, provided some needed capital to build a new feed mill. The business expanded rapidly in the late 1940s, but the Korean War and military draft pulled Bo Pilgrim into the United States Army from 1951 to 1953. Pilgrim spent this time teaching in an army leadership school in California and observing what he could of agribusiness on the West Coast. When he returned, the grain milling capacity of the business advanced. His first step was to buy three large grain tanks and a bulk feed truck. By the mid-1950s the Pilgrim business could chop corn, crimp oats, crack milo, and add a dash of homemade molasses to the feed. The brothers also made the crucial innovation of giving young chicks to feed buyers for free. In 1958 their attitude towards these handouts changed, and the Pilgrim company began to retain title to the now-loaned chickens. They purchased a hatchery in nearby Mount Pleasant and moved it to their feed store. This opened the way for chicken processing ( see POULTRY PRODUCTION ), and in 1960 they bought a processing plant which operated as Pilgrim Poultry Company by late 1961. Heart issues plagued both brothers. Aubrey died of a heart attack in 1966, and Bo Pilgrim became head of the company. (He later had open-heart surgery in 1975.) The younger brother, however, not only survived his operations, but gained an early awareness that leaner, whiter chicken meat would become attractive to buyers. In 1979 the company produced more than one million chickens per week. Pilgrim pioneered innovations such as the marketing of a "boneless chicken" that garnered widespread attention (but not long-term consumer interest) and the sale of nutritionally-enhanced eggs. In 1986 investors for the first time traded shares of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation on the New York Stock Exchange. By the late 1980s Pilgrim initiated a plan to overtake chief competitor Tyson's Foods of Arkansas as the number one poultry producer in the United States and cited Texas workers' compensation laws as a major obstacle to curtailing company profits. But to handle this feat, he tried to control the Texas legislature in a way he believed Tyson's controlled Arkansas. The result was

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Site of First Carnegie Library in Texas

1898

At 1898 request of firm mining coal in Pittsburg, philanthropist Andrew Carnegie gave $5,000.00 to match local pledges and build the first Carnegie Library (of 31) in Texas on this site. The masonry building was also the opera house and city hall. Library had 3,000 books. It became a social center, with meeting rooms for clubs and groups such as ladies sewing for World War I hospitals. The opera house staged professional drama and lectures and was used for graduations and recitals until modern school was built in 1926. The library burned in 1939. (1973)

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Sheppard, John L., Home

1884

Home of the Sheppard family from 1884, when the house was built, until 1891. During that time John L. Sheppard (1852-1902) served as district attorney and then judge for Fifth Judicial District. In 1899 he was elected to U. s. Congress and died in office. His son, Morris Sheppard (1875-1941), succeeded him in congress, then served with distinction in U. S. Senate from 1913-1951. House has eight fireplaces and secret passageway between floors. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974

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Pittsburg, Texas

Music in Pittsburg

Songs About Pittsburg

Artists From Pittsburg

Rivers & Roads in Song near Pittsburg

History of Pittsburg

Pittsburg, TX RoadyGoat

The Pre-Wright Brothers Flight of Pittsburg RoadyGoat

A Lake Named for the Man Who Willed It RoadyGoat

Shelby, Carroll Hall

Ezekiel Airship, The

Pilgrim, Lonnie Alfred [Bo]

Site of First Carnegie Library in Texas

Sheppard, John L., Home

Things to Do in Pittsburg

Everything Near Pittsburg