The Presbyterian Church of Ruston began in October, 1884.

In that same year, the railroad had been extended westward across north Louisiana, crossing a central north-south dirt road traveled by stagecoaches. The city of Ruston was founded at that intersection where a railroad station was built. Several Presbyterian families from the surrounding areas moved to the new city to take advantage of this growing transportation hub. And to establish the new centrally located Presbyterian Church of Ruston.

 

The new congregation met monthly at the Baptist Church until 1890 when it moved into its own new church building.  Unfortunately that new church mysteriously burned to the ground on a cold February night in 1909.  (Two tramps had built a fire in a stove in the unlocked church, left the stove door open, fell asleep, and woke up to the building on fire. They fled. The truth emerged years later through another tramp’s story.) The congregation continued meeting in borrowed facilities and then purchased their own church building on Bonner Street.

In 1921, during a congregational meeting, it was voted to construct a new church building on the current Bonner Street site.  That building, in classic Neo-Gothic Revival style, was completed for its first worship service in June, 1924. The original structure is today the main sanctuary.  It included a pipe organ (renovated in 1978) and two stained glass windows. The building is included in the National Register of Historic Places.

Over the years there have been needed additions to the church building.  In the early 1950s, twelve new stained-glass windows were added in the sanctuary.  An educational unit was built to provide classrooms and library space in 1953.  A white-on-white Celtic Cross was built into the Chancel at that time as well.  The 1999 Fellowship Hall, office space and nursery complete the structure and enclosing the prayer garden.

The congregation was briefly called the First Presbyterian Church.  It became again simply the Presbyterian Church of Ruston in 1988 when the former First Presbyterian Church merged with the former University Presbyterian Church.