Pitkin, LA

Pitkin is a census-designated place in Vernon Parish, Louisiana, United States. The 2020 census counted 455 residents. Pitkin is approximately 40 miles southeast of Leesville, the parish seat, and approximately 45 miles southwest of Alexandria. Burl Cain, former warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, was reared in Pitkin. Pitkin operates Pitkin High School. A newcomer can read Pitkin through the overlap of its older landmarks, surrounding geography, and current places. For a newcomer, Pitkin comes into focus through those concrete links among its past, landscape, and current routines. His older brother, James David, a former member of both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature, was born in Pitkin in 1938. In 1863, during the Civil War, Confederate soldiers built a military road from Niblett's Bluff to Alexandria that passed through the area. The Vernon Parish Tourism Commission placed an historical marker in 2009.