The railroad reached Ponchatoula in 1852, and what followed was a town built in layers, each industry leaving something behind. The Louisiana Cypress Lumber Company ran logs through the parish and left a locomotive — it sits outside the Collinswood School Museum now, stationary and honest about what paid for the brick storefronts on Pine Street. Those same storefronts went up to serve the strawberry trade, and in 1968 the city formalized what everyone already knew, passing an ordinance declaring itself the Strawberry Capital of the World. The old Illinois Central depot became a Railway Post Office museum; before highways arrived, that postal rail line was how rural Louisiana connected to the rest of the country. The depot now also houses the Ponchatoula Country Market. Each April, the Strawberry Festival draws roughly 300,000 visitors to a town that has quietly become America's Antique City — the berry money built the shells, and the antiques moved in.
