Frio Town

Frio City's first courthouse was a frame house, twenty by forty feet. The county court ordered bids in November 1871, and L. J. W. Edwards finished it in January 1872 with cypress hauled by ox wagon from John Leakey's sawmill, about eighty-five miles away. It burned in 1877. A two-story native stone courthouse replaced it, completed in 1878 at rancher W. J. Slaughter's own expense after the contractor's bid fell short. The ruins and the 1872 stone jail sit on private land, so this is a place to read about, not to visit.

What the plaque says

Frio Town Known 1871-1886 as Frio City; First county seat of Frio County 1871-1883. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frio Pioneer Jail Museum — 16 mi
  Pearsall's 1884 county jail, the town's oldest building, used for 83 years and now a free museum with a sheriff's home downstairs and six cells above.
• Landmark Inn State Historic Site — 35 mi
  A store and stage stop at the Medina River ford in Henri Castro's Alsatian town, with a mill race under the ground and rooms you can still rent for the night.

More markers nearby

• Frio Town Cemetery — 0.4 mi
• Tehuacana Cemetery — 12 mi
• Frio Lodge No. 399, A.F. & A.M. — 15 mi
• Frio County — 16 mi