Plaza de Carcel, y Casas de Correccion
Liberty, Liberty County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(Square of the Jail and Houses of Correction) Originally mapped 1831, according to laws of "Coahuila and Texas", then the northernmost state of Mexico. Prison sentences were to be worked out here. By 1885, though, this square was in the mercantile section of town, and the plaza to the east became "Jail Square."
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
First mapped in 1831 under the laws of Coahuila and Texas, then the northernmost state of Mexico, this square was set aside as the site of a jail and houses of correction where prison sentences would be served through labor. By 1885 the town had grown around it, folding the old plaza into the mercantile district while jail functions moved elsewhere. The site preserves a trace of Mexican civic planning in what would become an American town.
Why it matters
It is a rare surviving mark of Mexico's brief governance of Texas, when town squares were laid out by Spanish-language law rather than American custom.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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The town of Liberty has governed this corner of Texas across seven courthouses and two nations. The first, a building of hewn logs, went up in 1831 when Liberty was a municipality of Mexican Texas; independence in 1836 turned the municipality into a county. From frame structures of split cypress to brick halls lost to fire and condemnation, each courthouse rose and fell until the Cordova-limestone building of 1931, enlarged in 1957, finally endured.