Huntsville "Walls" Unit

In 1931 general prison manager Marshall Lee Simmons started a rodeo in a vacant field behind the Walls, with Sunday shows in October, the Handbook of Texas says. Within two years almost 15,000 outsiders came. Admission paid for a fund that bought inmates textbooks, dentures and Christmas turkeys. By the 1940s any male inmate with a clean record for the year could try out in September for one of about 100 slots, and women competed until their 1981 transfer from Goree to Gatesville. Engineers condemned the stadium, and the rodeo was suspended in late 1986.

What the plaque says

Huntsville "Walls" Unit (Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville) The Republic of Texas Congress passed a law to establish a prison system in 1842, but it wasn't until 1848, after a new law passed the state legislature, that steps were taken to achieve the goal. Huntsville was selected as the site for the state prison facility, and Governor George Tyler Wood appointed master builder Abner H. Cook as first superintendent and construction supervisor for the prison. The first three inmates -- a cattle thief, a murderer and a horse thief -- arrived to a partially completed facility in 1849. Throughout its history, the Walls Unit has cycled through periods of negligence and reform, with a variety of administrative boards governing its operations. In the 1850s, the prison operated a cotton and woolen mill with inmate labor to help generate its own revenue. In 1866, the state legislature enabled the superintendent to lease the prisoners for work in the private sector. This convict lease system lasted until the reform movement in the early 20th century accomplished its abolition in 1910. Additional reforms and a need created during the Great Depression to operate the facility more efficiently led to the establishment of canning operations, a license plate manufacturing plant, and the inauguration of the Texas Prison Rodeo. This penitentiary has held Kiowa chiefs Satanta and Big Tree, infamous gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, and Federal prisoners of war during the Civil War. As headquarters of the Texas prison system until 1989, the Walls Unit is the facility from which capital punishment was carried out from 1924 until 1964, and then again after 1982. (2001)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 31 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.

More markers nearby

• State Penitentiary C.S.A. — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Huntsville — steps away
• Site of Cumberland Presbyterian Church — steps away
• Forrest Lodge No. 19, A.F. & A.M. — steps away