Old Atascosa County Jail
Jourdanton, Atascosa County, Texas
Marker Inscription
County officials rented a small Jourdanton house for a jail in 1911 after the county seat was moved here from Pleasanton in 1910. A proposal to build a new jail with cells from the old Pleasanton structure was rejected and this reinforced-concrete, brick-clad building with new steel cells was authorized in 1915. This site was purchased that year from W.M. Abernethy (1851-1931), who had served as County Judge from 1901 to 1912. The architect of the 1912 Courthouse, Henry T. Phelps (1881-1945) of San Antonio, was chosen to supervise erection of the jail. The Southern Structural Steel Company of San Antonio was awarded the $20,000 construction contract. An electic blend of architectural elements was highlighted with crenelated towers and hood molds outlining the windows. The first floor housed offices and living quarters for Sheriffs and their families, provided from 1916 to 1959. A gallows room was built on the second floor, though its trap door was never sprung for execution. Standard and specialized cells were partitioned on the second and third floors. Additions were built in 1974, with bricks and detailing carefully matching original patterns. A new jail was built to replace this building in 1982. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Atascosa County moved its seat to Jourdanton in 1910, officials made do with a rented house for a jail before authorizing this reinforced-concrete, brick-clad lockup in 1915. Designed under courthouse architect Henry T. Phelps and built by San Antonio's Southern Structural Steel Company, it blended crenelated towers and hood-molded windows with living quarters for the sheriff's family. Its second-floor gallows room was built but never used for an execution.
Why it matters
The building captures how young Texas counties expressed civic ambition and frontier order through fortress-like public architecture in the early twentieth century.
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Related people
- · Henry T. Phelps
- · W.M. Abernethy
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.
Atascosa County Courthouse
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This log cabin replicates Atascosa County's first courthouse, built in 1856 near Amphion on land granted by Jose Antonio Navarro — a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence who helped organize the county. The first court convened in 1857, presided over by a roster of frontier officials whose names the marker preserves: sheriff, chief justice, clerks, and judges of a brand-new South Texas county. It memorializes the moment raw frontier settlement became organized civic government.
Jourdanton United Methodist Church
Jourdanton, TX
When the railroad town of Jourdanton took shape in 1909, its Methodist congregation organized the same year, worshiping first in a tent before trustees bought a corner lot and raised a frame church in 1910. As the community grew, the congregation rebuilt in 1941, moved and replaced its sanctuary over the following decades, and spun off a lively network of women's, men's and youth societies. The present sanctuary dates to 1964.
First Baptist Church of Jourdanton
Jourdanton, TX
First Baptist organized in October 1909, just a month after the town of Jourdanton itself was founded, when seven residents gathered under a visiting minister and met in the community schoolhouse. Within a year they built a frame church, and in 1911 the women formed a missionary union that funded state and foreign missions and orphan care. New sanctuaries in 1946 and 1977 and a large worship center in 2003 tracked the congregation's steady growth.