Old Kent County Jail
Clairemont, Kent County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built, 1894, of red sandstone quarried nearby. Horse and cattle thieves, murderers, moonshiners most common prisoners. One of most difficult West Texas jails from which to escape. No attempted break successful. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1965
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Raised in 1894 from red sandstone quarried nearby, this jail served the raw frontier of Kent County, where its most frequent guests were horse and cattle thieves, murderers, and moonshiners. Reputed to be one of the hardest lockups in West Texas to break out of, it never saw a successful escape. The stout little building is a relic of an era when law had to be built as solidly as the crimes it aimed to hold.
Why it matters
Frontier jails embody the hard-won arrival of order on the open range, standing as monuments to the fragile early institutions of law in the American West.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Kent County
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Kent County was carved from older Texas territories in 1876 and formally organized in 1892, taking its name from Andrew Kent, one of the defenders who fell at the Alamo. Its county seat first sat at Clairmont before moving to Jayton in 1952. The State of Texas erected this marker during the 1936 centennial of independence.
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