Williamson County Jail

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Williamson County Jail. Now, every county in Texas has got a story locked up somewhere, and Williamson County's is right there in the stone itself. Native limestone, to be precise.

Heavy, pale, honest rock pulled from the Texas earth, shaped into a building that has been in continuous use since 1888. Think about that for a moment. Since 1888.

That jail has been doing its job without a single break, without a pause, without so much as a long weekend off. Before it, there was a frame jail built back in 1848, wood and planks and whatever passed for sturdy in those days. But the grand jury had seen enough.

They put in their request, and Williamson County answered. The new jail came in at twenty-two thousand dollars, and here is the part that makes you sit up a little straighter around the campfire: they financed the whole thing without a bond issue. Not a single bond.

Somebody in that county knew how to hold the purse strings tight. Now, the building itself was styled after the French Bastille. Yes, that Bastille.

That fortress silhouette, those severe and serious lines, planted right there in the Texas Hill Country. And when remodeling came around in 1934, at a cost of forty thousand dollars, they left that French Bastille styling completely unchanged. Whatever they were fixin, it wasn't the look.

Some things, it turns out, you just do not mess with. The limestone holds. The style holds.

And that jail, it just keeps on holding.

What the marker says

In continuous use since 1888. Native limestone. Cost $22,000. Replaced 1848 frame jail at grand jury request. Financed without a bond issue. French Bastille styling, unchanged at remodeling, at cost of $40,000, in 1934. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965.