The Ernie Wilson Museum

The Ernie Wilson Museum of the Old West, founded in 1956, is named for its first curator, a lawyer who published the Buffalo Gap Messenger. In 1970 Dr. R. Lee Rode and his wife, Ann, bought the old jail and courthouse and restored it with help from the community. The Handbook of Texas dates the native limestone jail to 1879 and describes blocks that were concave in the center and mortared together with cannonballs against escape. In the 1990s the museum became part of Buffalo Gap Historic Village, which the McWhiney History Education Group bought in 1999.

What the plaque says

Located in Taylor County's historic first courthouse and jail. Although Taylor County was organized in July 1878, the building was not completed until May 20, 1880, because of Indian scares and lack of funds. Scene of frequent jail breaks, lynchings. Note cannon balls (marked by arrows) keying limestone blocks. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — steps away
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Abilene State Park — 5.1 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.
• Frontier Texas! — 13 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Z. I. Hale Museum and Rock Hotel — 24 mi
  A free museum in a Winters optometrist's office, a 1909 railroad hotel and a 1927 implement dealership, with Rogers Hornsby's hometown memorabilia and a 1912 horse-drawn cotton picker.

More markers nearby

• Town of Buffalo Gap — 0.4 mi
• Buffalo Gap College — 0.4 mi
• Taylor County — 4.0 mi
• The Civilian Conservation Corps at Abilene State Park — 4.5 mi