Atascosa County Courthouse
Jourdanton, Atascosa County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Atascosa County was created from Bexar County in 1856. The first county seat was at Navatasco, on land donated by Jose Antonio Navarro, and the county's first courthouse was a log cabin. The county seat was moved to Pleasanton in 1858, and a frame courthouse was erected. A second courthouse was built in 1868, followed by a third, a red rock structure in 1885. When a special election resulted in the relocation of the county seat to Jourdanton in 1910, the county officers were first housed in rented quarters. The following year the Gordon-Jones Company began construction on a new courthouse. Completed in 1912, the building was designed by San Antonio architect Henry T. Phelps (1881-1945), who would also design the Atascosa County Jail in 1915. The two-story brick building has identical entries at each side. Mission Revival-style detail includes curvilinear parapets and occasional Renaissance motifs, accomplished with cast-stone highlights, metal balustrades, and tile roofing. The corners of the building are turned with three-story tower bays, each topped by an open belvedere. Later alterations to the courthouse replaced original windows and installed an elevator opposite the original stairwell. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Atascosa County's courthouse history reads like a map of shifting frontier fortunes: created from Bexar County in 1856, the county moved its seat from Navatasco to Pleasanton and finally, in 1910, to Jourdanton, cycling through log cabin, frame, and red-rock buildings along the way. The present Mission Revival courthouse, completed in 1912 to designs by San Antonio architect Henry T. Phelps, crowns that journey with curvilinear parapets, corner tower bays, and tile roofing. It remains the civic anchor of this South Texas county seat.
Why it matters
The courthouse embodies the Texas tradition of the county seat as civic centerpiece and the Mission Revival style that defined early-twentieth-century public architecture across the state.
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Related people
- · Henry T. Phelps
- · Jose Antonio Navarro
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Atascosa County
Jourdanton, TX
By 1722 the Camino Real—the King's Highway—already ran through this region on its way from the Rio Grande to San Antonio, crossing the boggy ground the Spanish called 'atascosa.' Carved from Bexar County in 1856, Atascosa County took that name for its muddy terrain. Its first county seat, Navatasco, rose on land granted to José Antonio Navarro before the seat moved to Pleasanton and finally Jourdanton, in a county long known for livestock, oil, gas, and strawberries.
Jourdan Campbell
Jourdanton, TX
Jourdan Campbell, son of Campbellton founder John Campbell, grew up in Atascosa County and became a county commissioner in the 1890s. In 1907 he and Col. T. H. Zanderson bought the 33,760-acre Tobey Ranch, part of which became the town of Jourdanton, where Campbell served as bank vice president and lobbied hard for a railroad. His efforts helped make Jourdanton the county seat in 1910 and pushed a highway project linking the county's towns.
Jourdanton
Jourdanton, TX
In 1909 two entrepreneurs—merchant Jourdan Campbell and Danish wool-and-mohair man Theodore Zanderson—laid out a town on their ranch and persuaded a land speculator to bring the railroad through; the first train arrived that September. Jourdanton quickly gained utilities, a bank, a newspaper and churches, and in 1910 wrested the county seat from Pleasanton. Oil and gas discoveries in the 1940s and later lignite mining kept the town growing well after the railroads stopped running.
Jourdanton City Cemetery
Jourdanton, TX
Jourdanton was platted in 1907 after two men bought the 40,000-acre Toby Ranch, and the arrival of the Artesian Belt Railroad made the town boom—with a lumberyard, cotton gin, bank and hotels—so quickly that in 1910 voters moved the county seat here from Pleasanton. The city cemetery, set aside in the original plat, holds early settlers, some hundred veterans including Civil War soldiers, and four sheriffs, its graves ranging from wooden crosses to curbed family plots.