Old Jail & Courthouse
Bandera, Bandera County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built 1881. Local stone, cypress floors used. Housed county offices until 1890. Used 57 years. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1881 of local stone with cypress floors, this building held Bandera County's offices — jail and courthouse together — until 1890. In a young Hill Country county, a single sturdy stone building often had to serve as the whole seat of government. It remained in public use for some 57 years.
Why it matters
Early combined jail-and-courthouse buildings like this one embody how frontier counties first organized law and government with modest means.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Bandera County Courthouse
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Georgia stonemason Henry White is credited with raising this stone building in 1868 in the young frontier town of Bandera. By 1877 a store filled the ground floor while the Masonic Lodge met above; that year the county bought it to house its offices, which had been renting quarters. It stayed in county hands even after a grander courthouse rose in 1890.
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The name Bandera traces to eighteenth-century clashes between the Spanish army and Lipan Apaches at the nearby pass, but the town itself began in the 1840s when Charles de Montel, John James, and John Hunter Herndon surveyed and purchased land along the Medina River. A Mormon colony arrived in 1854, followed by Polish immigrants whose hand-cut limestone buildings still stand, and settlers of many nations soon joined them. In 1856 the Texas Legislature made Bandera the seat of its new county.
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