Yellow Bush

Yellow Bush was ten miles southwest of Pittsburg in southwestern Camp County. It grew up in the 1870s around a school built by settlers who lived in the area. Although the community is referred to as Yellow Bush in Camp County school records, the original name was apparently Yallo Busha, which, according to the early settlers, was an Indian term meaning "beautiful stream." In 1897 the one-teacher, one-room, ungraded school served twenty-one White children. Originally, the schoolhouse also served as a church, but a Baptist church was later built a hundred yards from the schoolhouse. In 1909 a new church building was erected and named Hopewell Baptist Church. A bad crop in 1919, followed by the appearance of the boll weevil and a depression in agriculture, caused the community to decline and then disappear. By 1935 the school had been consolidated with that of a nearby community, and by 1955 all of the county's districts had been consolidated with the Pittsburg Independent School District. The church at Yellow Bush was disbanded in 1950, and when the Newsome church burned down shortly thereafter, the Hopewell church building was moved to Newsome. By 1960 the only remaining physical evidence of the Yellow Bush community was Hopewell Cemetery.