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LEESBURG,
TEXAS
Camp County, East
Texas
Highway 11
7 Miles W of Pittsburg
Population 115 (2000)
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Leesburg
Baptist Church
Photo courtesy Barclay Gibson, July 2007 |
History in
a Pecan Shell
The town was named to honor early settler John Lee. A three-way election
was held in 1874 to determine the county seat of Camp county. Leesburg
came in second. That same year a post office opened as Leesburgh and
the town went by that spelling until around 1900 when the h was dropped.
With the arrival of the East Line and Red River Railroad in the late
1870s, Leesburg was made a stop. By the mid 1884s the town had a population
of 50. It tripled by 1890 and doubled from that figure to 300 by 1896.
It remained at that level into the Great Depression, but by WWII,
it had declined to an estimate of 120. Leesburg schools merged with
the Pittsburg
Independent School District in the mid 1950s and the population reached
75, climbing slowly to the current 115. |
Leesburg
Store
Photo courtesy Barclay Gibson, July 2007 |
Leesburg
Cemetery
Photo courtesy Barclay Gibson, July 2007 |
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