Dog Town Jail
McMullen County, McMullen County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First County Jail, built 1880 at cost of $2800. First expenses included 2 blankets, pair of leg irons, 2 pairs handcuffs. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1966.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1880 for $2,800, this was the first county jail in McMullen County, deep in the South Texas brush country then known as "Dog Town." Its earliest supplies tell the story of frontier justice: a couple of blankets, a pair of leg irons, and two sets of handcuffs.
Why it matters
A spare relic of frontier law and order, the jail marks the moment a raw ranching county began building the institutions of settled government.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
McMullen County
Tilden, TX
McMullen County was carved out of the South Texas brush country in 1858 and organized in 1862, only to be abandoned during the Civil War when bandits ruled its thickets; it was reorganized in 1877 with Tilden as its seat. It honors John McMullen, an empresario who, with James McGloin, planted the Irish colony at San Patricio and served in the provisional government on the eve of the Texas Republic. The marker also surveys how Texas's 254 counties got their names, from Alamo defenders to Confederate figures.
Tilden
McMullen County, TX
Settled in 1858 as Rio Frio, this ranching outpost earned the nickname "Dog Town" for the packs of dogs its cowmen used to round up wild cattle. A townsite was platted as Colfax in 1871, made county seat in 1877, and finally renamed for Samuel J. Tilden, who won the popular vote in the disputed 1876 presidential election. It grew into a center of ranching and, later, petroleum.
Old Rock Store
Tilden, TX
Irish stonemason Pat Cavanaugh, aided by Dick Barker, built this sturdy stone store around 1865 in the settlement then known as Dog Town—later Tilden. During the wide-open, lawless years of the 1860s and 1870s it witnessed gun battles typical of a rough South Texas frontier town. It has been preserved since 1929 by owner Clifton Wheeler.
Boot Hill Cemetery
McMullen County, TX
This lonely South Texas graveyard earned its grim frontier nickname the hard way. Its occupants, chronicled on the marker, include men killed in gunfights at Fort Ewell and outside the old Rock Store, cholera victims from an 1869 outbreak, a boy thrown from a horse, and a suspected member of an outlaw gang — a roll call of violent and untimely deaths from the 1860s and 1870s. The very first grave belonged to a suicide.