Arnold Outhouse

The Texas Department of Transportation calls John Arnold a prominent lawyer and businessman. His privy has three seats in small, medium and large sizes, louvered windows for ventilation and a glass-paned window in the back. When a library was built, the house and other outbuildings were removed, and Miss Gandy moved the outhouse to her own home to save it. It later returned to museum land, under 200 feet from its first spot. Virginia Knapp pushed the marker application along despite some laughter, and the Handbook of Texas says it earned Henderson the title Fanciest Little Outhouse in Texas.

What the plaque says

Arnold Outhouse Prominent Henderson businessman and civic leader John R. Arnold moved his family to this property in 1908. He added a second story to the home (razed in 1966) that already existed at the site. He also built a number of structures around the property, including this outhouse. It was larger than most standard outhouses of its day, and the milled pattern on the door and window facings matched that of the large Arnold house. The Arnold Outhouse is preserved to illustrate part of the lifestyle of 19th and early 20th-century Texans. (1984)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• New London Museum and Cenotaph — 10 mi
  A volunteer-run museum beside the pink granite cenotaph for the March 1937 school gas explosion, holding a model of the school, a blackboard from that day and an odorizer device.
• East Texas Oil Museum — 16 mi
  A Kilgore College museum that rebuilds the 1930s oil boom in a full-scale Boomtown with a general store, drugstore and newspaper office, plus dioramas, films and antiques given by East Texans.
• Tex Ritter Museum and Texas Country Music Hall of Fame — 26 mi
  Carthage's country music museum, with Tex Ritter's boots, guitars and saddles in a room styled like a movie theater, and exhibits on other Texas stars, Jim Reeves among them.

More markers nearby

• The Railroad in Rusk County — steps away
• Rusk County Agriculture — steps away
• Henderson Depot — steps away
• East Texas Musical Convention — steps away