Frio Pioneer Jail Museum

The Old Frio County Jail in Pearsall went up in 1884, a year after voters moved the county seat from Frio Town to the new railroad town. Prisoners had repeatedly escaped the Frio Town jail, so the county wanted an escape-proof one. While it was built, inmates were sent to the Bexar County jail in San Antonio and later to the La Salle County jail in Cotulla. On January 7, 1884 the commissioners hired P. J. Pauly & Brother of St. Louis for $11,000.

The result is a two-story Victorian building of plastered brick with pedimented gables and moulded brickwork, standing on the site of the temporary courthouse. It served as the county jail until a new one opened in 1967, with only minor repairs. Downstairs, in the sheriff's and jailer's residence, the museum now shows photographs and objects including a 1910 opera house playbill, a 1914 dance card and a pear burner used to singe the spines off prickly pear in drought. Upstairs are the cells, and one women's cell held seized liquor during Prohibition. In 1969 the building handed out federal commodity food.

The Frio Pioneer Jail Museum Association opened it as a museum in the 1970s; the Handbook of Texas gives its dedication as July 3, 1976. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. Admission is free, and the annual Pioneer Day also brings in the relocated Frio Town school.