Old Jail Art Center

Shackelford County built its first permanent jail in 1877 and 1878, to a design by John Thomas of the Fort Worth builders Thomas and Woerner, at a cost of more than $9,000 that outraged the taxpayers. The county was young and short of cash, so the Scottish stonemasons cut their initials into the limestone blocks to make sure they would be paid. For decades it was called the alphabet jail: the M and the E are known to be the marks of masons named McGuire and Emery, and an X and a triangle are thought to be the marks of men who could not write. It held prisoners until 1929 and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Reilly Nail, a Princeton graduate, writer and former television producer, inherited the empty building from an uncle in 1968. With his cousin, the artist Bill Bomar, he combined their collections of twentieth-century art with their mothers' collections of Asian art, and the museum opened in 1980 with four small galleries. The permanent collection now numbers more than 2,400 works, among them Jewel Nail Bomar's ancient Chinese terra-cotta tomb figures and works by Picasso, Klee and Modigliani.

Additions in 1984, 1996, 2009 and 2016, all by Fort Worth architect Arthur Weinman, brought it to about 17,000 square feet, including an archive and a room on the ranching families of the county. The museum has been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums since 1989 and shows emerging artists each year.