San Saba County Jail
San Saba, San Saba County, Texas
Marker Inscription
County's oldest existing public building. Erected in 1884, the structure cost $13,000 and lot $300. Jail was built of blue limestone in Italianate Texas style. A 12-foot-high board fence (built after an 1886 jail break) has been replaced. Jailer lived on first floor.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Erected in 1884 at a cost of $13,000 for the building and $300 for the lot, the San Saba County Jail is the county's oldest surviving public building. Built of blue limestone in an Italianate Texas style, it housed the jailer's family on the first floor. A twelve-foot board fence went up after an 1886 jailbreak and has since been removed.
Why it matters
Sturdy stone county jails were among the first permanent public buildings on the Texas frontier, physical proof of the rule of law arriving in newly organized country.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
San Saba County Courthouse
San Saba, TX
San Saba County was created by the Texas Legislature in 1856, and a frame courthouse and later a stone one served its people on this site through the nineteenth century. In 1910, with the city newly incorporated and a railroad connection on the way, residents authorized a grand replacement. Alabama architect Walter Chamberlain designed this Classical Revival building of pressed brick and rusticated sandstone, finished just as the first train arrived in August 1911.
The Texas Rangers and the San Saba Mob
San Saba, TX
Isolated from courts and railroads, San Saba County in the mid-1800s spawned vigilante "mobs" that first promised protection and then curdled into a secret terror society. By the 1880s the shadowy San Saba Mob — organized like a fraternal lodge, complete with secret signs and midnight meetings at places like Buzzards' Water Hole — was ambushing settlers, leaving victims marked by nine bullet holes. In 1896 the state sent in the Texas Rangers under Sgt. W. J. L. Sullivan and later Capt. Bill McDonald, who paired with District Attorney W. C. Linden to move trials out of the county and finally break the Mob's grip by 1900.
Cedar Log Cabin Museum
San Saba, TX
This cedar log structure served more than a century ago as stables on the Charles Harris ranch along Cherokee Creek south of San Saba, built sturdy enough to keep horses from being stolen in the raiding days of the Texas frontier. Preserved as the Cedar Log Cabin Museum, it was given in memory of Eula Gray Kuykendall by her husband and children. The building stands as a rare survivor of early ranch life in the county.
Estep-Burleson Building
San Saba, TX
Elijah Estep, San Saba County's second tax assessor-collector, built this two-story building of locally quarried limestone facing the courthouse in the early 1870s, running a mercantile store nearby. Long mislabeled the "Burden Hotel," records show it was Estep's own construction on a lot he bought in 1871. It later served as attorney Leigh Burleson's law office and passed through other hands, narrowly escaping demolition in the 1990s before being donated and restored to its 1911 appearance.