Site of First Carnegie Library in Texas

Wikipedia's list of Carnegie libraries in Texas dates the Pittsburg grant to April 30, 1898, for $5,000, and calls it the eighth Carnegie library commissioned in the United States and only the second outside southwestern Pennsylvania. The Handbook of Texas puts the promise in 1899, says the city had to fund a building and agree to maintain the library, and says the council matched the grant. It calls Pittsburg only reputed to have had the first Carnegie library in Texas. The building burned in December 1939, and no new library came until the 1970s.

What the plaque says

Site of First Carnegie Library in Texas 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)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Bob Sandlin State Park — 8.7 mi
  A 1987 state park on a 9,000-acre reservoir, where a Republic of Texas stockade called Fort Sherman stood in 1838 and the Caddo lived from A.D. 800 to 1860, now with fishing piers, trails and cabins.
• Daingerfield State Park — 16 mi
  A pine-and-hardwood park built in 1935-39 by a white and a Black Civilian Conservation Corps company, with a dammed lake, Bass Lodge and a 2.4-mile loop trail around the water.

More markers nearby

• Pittsburg — steps away
• Pitts Family Cemetery — steps away
• The Ezekiel Airship — steps away
• New Mine Baptist Church — 3.0 mi