What is the history of Pearl River, Louisiana?
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. Early Halloo was a small railroad town, located at the junction of the Northeastern and Poitevent and Favre’s East Louisiana Railroads. In 1886 a train station was constructed at the site, and two years later Samuel R. Poitevent established the first store in the village. The community’s name was first changed from Halloo to Pearl, later to Pearlville, 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 which 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
