Armstrong County Jail

The jail stood beside a courthouse square that early Claude remembered for other things. Before the town had water and sewer systems, residents came to a public trough on the square for water, shaded by a cottonwood tree, and one early resident recalled that the old wooden courthouse "always smelled of tobacco and disinfectant." By 1912 a permanent stone courthouse had replaced the frame building. When the 1953 jail went up, Claude was a smaller town than it had been: the Handbook of Texas counts 1,041 residents in 1930 and 761 in 1940.

What the plaque says

Armstrong County Jail Erected in 1953, this building is constructed of stone used to build the first masonry jail in Armstrong County, 1894. Stone for the structure (which replaced a primitive, frame "calaboose") was quarried 14 miles south at Dripping Springs in Palo Duro Canyon and then hauled here in wagons driven by local citizens. The rock was cut at this site. The 1894 building had two stories, topped by a dome, and 20-inch walls. So sturdy was it that dangerous convicts from other counties were kept here. Old-timers remember that only three prisoners ever escaped. (1969)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Gem Theatre — steps away
  Claude's small-town movie house of 1915, restored by the Armstrong County Museum and remembered for the scene in Hud where Homer and Lonnie Bannon sing along to Clementine.
• Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site — 11 mi
  The two-story house the Goodnights moved into on December 27, 1887, after leaving the JA, with a porch that looks over bison descended from the calves Mary Ann saved.
• Carson County Square House Museum — 16 mi
  The 1880s ranch cottage that is the oldest house in the town of Panhandle, at the heart of a twenty-one-building museum of the plains from mammoth hunters to the oil boom.
• Lighthouse Trail — 21 mi
  The park's most walked trail, 2.8 miles each way across the canyon floor to the Lighthouse, a hoodoo of Triassic sandstone balanced on a pedestal of softer red shale.

More markers nearby

• Early Sheriffs of Armstrong County, 1890-1926 — steps away
• Claude News — steps away
• Site of Warner Building — steps away
• Charles Howard Roan — steps away