Picayune

Picayune grew up around timber. In 1916 L. O. Crosby Sr. moved here after buying a large tract from a Michigan owner and the Rosa sawmill. With Lamont Rowlands he organized the Goodyear Yellow Pine Company, which ran the Rosa and Goodyear mills and shipped millions of board feet to the Midwest, with International Harvester among its contracts. The Pearl River Valley Railroad carried lumber to the Southern Railway at Nicholson. The town, incorporated in 1904 with 846 people in 1910, held 4,698 by 1930. German prisoners of war built creosote plants here late in the Second World War.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Crosby Arboretum — 1.9 mi
  A Mississippi State University arboretum in Picayune showing the plants of the Pearl River basin, with Fay Jones's Pinecote Pavilion among the pitcher plant savanna and pines.
• INFINITY Science Center — 16 mi
  NASA's visitor center for Stennis Space Center, at the Mississippi welcome center near the Louisiana line, with a Saturn V booster outside and a story of five river towns that were moved.
• Fontainebleau State Park — 24 mi
  Lakeshore park on the Northshore where Tchefuncte potters, Acolapissa and Choctaw lived, and where 153 people were enslaved at Marigny's sugar and brick plantation by 1840; the mill ruin still stands.

More markers nearby

• Picayune Colored High School — 0.6 mi
• Napoleon — 14 mi
• Gainesville Volunteers — 16 mi
• Original Lone Star Republic — 16 mi