History of Pearl River

The community that is today Pearl River was originally known as Halloo, a moniker it reputedly garnered from loggers yelling to one another as they labored along the nearby Pearl River. The town was founded in 1859. Early Halloo was a small railroad town, located at the junction of the Northeastern, Poitevent, and Favre’s East Louisiana Railroads. In 1886, a train station was constructed at the site, and two years later, Samuel Russ Poitevent (June 4, 1852–June 3, 1904) established the first store in the village. The community’s name was first changed from Halloo (1859) to Pearl (1878), later to Pearlville (1881), and eventually Pearl River in 1888, after the train station built in the town.

On July 13, 1898, the 200 citizens of Pearl River voted to petition the state of Louisiana for incorporation as the “Village of Pearl River”, a request that was granted nearly a decade later, on May 24, 1906, by Governor Newton Crain Blanchard, with G.W. Fuller as the first mayor. The village slowly modernized over the course of the next half century, acquiring the land for a courthouse in 1935 and a town hall ten years later. Pearl River Junior High was opened in 1963, but the building was converted into a police training academy in 2005. In 1964, the village insignia was replaced, as the newly minted “town” laid claim to 1,500 residents, a designation that lives on today in the town of about 2,500.