A barbeque and parade of about three thousand people attended the laying of the cornerstone in July 1909 for one of Mississippi’s first agricultural high schools (AHS). Theodore Bilbo, then Pearl River’s first-term Progressive state senator, helped pass legislation in 1908 allowing counties to establish these centralized boarding institutions for rural students. Bilbo also served on the school’s first board of trustees. In 1921, Pearl River became the first AHS in the state to add college courses, thereby becoming Mississippi’s first public junior college. Like most colleges, it expanded dramatically after World War II. Its most imposing buildings—with a few exceptions—stand around a semicircular drive facing U.S. 11. Huff Hall (1919, P. J. Krouse), Moody Hall (1926), and White Hall (1928) share a unified but subdued classicism. The Shivers Gymnasium (1948, Krouse and Yarbrough) ventures into the Moderne style, the strong geometries of the barrel-vaulted gym and its flat-roofed lobby intersecting with the verticals of the front piers. The original president’s house (1924), a sturdy brick Craftsman bungalow located behind the semicircular drive, is now the Alumni House.
Hurricanes have left their mark on the campus. Camille (1969) blew the roof off the 1912 Batson Hall, and it was later demolished. Katrina in 2005 did the same to the auditorium roof on Moody Hall, leading to that rear wing’s demolition in 2006.