Old County Jail

The Palo Pinto jail follows a common late nineteenth-century Texas plan, but the details are its own. The National Register nomination describes a two-story sandstone cube thirty by forty feet and twenty-eight feet high, with walls thirty-two inches thick of brown stone quarried near town. The jailer's family lived on the first floor, with a kitchen and a trustees' room. On the second floor stood free-standing iron cages, then the latest design in detention. Three sets of iron bars secured the upper windows, and the doors had double sets.

What the plaque says

Old County Jail Built to replace a log jail, this native sandstone structure was erected by contractors Martin, Byrne and Johnston of Comanche. J. C. McQuerry was sheriff when it was finished (1880). The first floor was used for county offices until a new courthouse was finished. It then housed the jailer's family, while the top floor held killers, cattle rustlers, rowdy cowboys, and other prisoners. A steel trap door was installed for hangings in 1907 but never used. Vacated in 1941, the building was acquired by the Palo Pinto County Historical Association in 1968 and restored as its headquarters and museum. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Mineral Wells State Park and Trailway — 15 mi
  A Cross Timbers park on the old Camp Wolters grounds, built around a 1922 water-supply lake for a spa town, with Penitentiary Hollow's rock climbing and a 20-mile trailway.
• Old Post Office Museum and Art Center — 29 mi
  Graham's 1936 Art Moderne post office, with a New Deal mural by Alexandre Hogue inside, now the free museum of Young County in the town where the Texas cattle raisers first organized.

More markers nearby

• Courthouses of Palo Pinto County — steps away
• Palo Pinto Cemetery — 0.4 mi
• Palo Pinto County — 1.6 mi
• George Webb Slaughter — 5.2 mi