Pine Ridge

Pine Ridge is on Farm Road 421 four miles northeast of Sour Lake in southern Hardin County. The community dates to 1867, when David M. Jordan, a Baptist minister originally from Georgia, and his wife Susan moved to the site and built a log home and church. Jordan was the pastor of the Pine Ridge Baptist Church, chartered in 1874, until his death in 1906. His son George and daughter-in-law Sultana, who inherited the homestead, planted a sugarcane patch and operated a syrup mill. At some point a one-room school was organized at Pine Ridge, but in 1950 it was consolidated with the Sour Lake Independent School District (later the Hardin-Jefferson Independent School District). The Pine Ridge oilfield, discovered in 1952, lies northeast of the scattered residential community. Additional oil was found in 1979, although yields from area fields remained minimal through the mid-1980s. In 1986 the Pine Ridge Nursery, the Pine Ridge Egg Farm, and the Baptist church marked the dispersed community.