Legends of the Ridge

Richland had two saloons in the 1890s. In neighbouring Freestone County, officers raided road houses for whiskey in 1925, and in 1933 a sheriff reported seven stills captured around his county. A Dawson man's memoir remembers "corn licker" from "well known local bootleggers," and says some claimed the Baptists and the bootleggers voted together to keep Dawson dry. We have not found a still on the record at Purdon, Pisgah Ridge or Richland Creek. That may be a gap in the records, not in the history.

Pisgah Ridge does have caves: the state historical marker says "many," in soft limestone now badly eroded. One page on the Navarro County TXGenWeb local-history site, with no author or source given, says a cave near Pisgah was a saloon and gambling den called the White Elephant, kept by one Luck Short, "the undertaker's friend," with a stove, tables and a canvas hung over the mouth. We have found no other record of it. We would like to.

A former Mount Nebo resident, writing in 2004, passed along the ridge's old tales. In those tales, Belle Starr and John Wesley Hardin hid out nearby, treasure was buried on the ridge and people dug holes looking for it, and two "hanging trees" stood there. Hardin did live and teach near Pisgah in 1869, by his own account, but his book says nothing about hiding in caves. And a 1933 county history notes that in the days before banks, treasure hunting went on across the county.

a good legend deserves to be kept honest.

In October 1927, robbers hit the First State Bank of Richland, and their getaway car was seen in the Richland Creek bottom. The next month, a car used by bank robbers from Tehuacana was found burned on Pisgah Ridge.

If you hear a mountain lion story out here, here is the record: Texas Parks and Wildlife has not confirmed a lion in Navarro County, or any county around it, since its records began in 1982, as of September 2026. The closest confirmed, in Dallas County in 2020, was most likely a young male passing through. Young lions do wander. None has been proven to have wandered here.

Navarro County's count in the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization's online database, as of September 2026: zero. The nearest report on their books is from August 2009. A truck driver near Streetman, in neighbouring Freestone County, described a hairy upright figure about seven feet tall that stood, growled and ran. Make of it what you will.

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