Sterling County Jail
Sterling City, Sterling County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This two-story jail building was constructed in 1912, twenty-one years after the organization of Sterling County. Built by the Southern Structural Steel Co., it is located on property deeded to the county by Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Stewart. Stone for the exterior was quarried locally. The interior includes a downstairs living area for the sheriff and seven cells on the upper floor. An addition to the rear was completed in the 1960s. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1912, two decades after Sterling County was organized, this two-story jail was raised by the Southern Structural Steel Co. on land donated by the Stewart family, its exterior faced in locally quarried stone. The ground floor held living quarters for the sheriff, while seven cells occupied the upper story. A rear addition followed in the 1960s.
Why it matters
County jails like this one document how young West Texas counties built the machinery of law and order into their brand-new courthouse towns.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sterling County
Sterling City, TX
The prairie split by the north Concho River was long the hunting ground of the Comanche, Kickapoo, Kiowa, Lipan, and Wichita peoples, and may have been crossed by Spanish expeditions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the 1860s and 70s came commercial buffalo hunters, one of whom, Capt. W. S. Sterling, gave his name to the creek; the outlaws Frank and Jesse James reputedly kept horse herds nearby, and the Army held Camp Elizabeth as a Fort Concho outpost. As big cattle outfits and then family homesteaders moved in, the county was created in 1891 and named for its first regular resident.
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When the Concho, San Saba and Llano Valley Railroad pushed a line into Sterling City in 1909, it was chasing the wealth of West Texas ranch country—livestock that needed a way to distant markets. A boxcar served as the first depot until this mission revival station rose to take its place, becoming the hub of a young ranching town. Highways and pipelines eventually siphoned away the freight, and the line went quiet in 1958, leaving the depot as the last witness to the rail era that built the area.
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Cummins grew up around 1890 beside the saddle-and-harness shop of its first permanent settler, Robert Benjamin Cummins. When Sterling County was created in 1891, it and nearby Sterling City became bitter rivals for the county seat, their newspaper editors trading barbs in print. A contested first election ended in a tie after voting boxes were thrown out; a second vote gave Sterling City the seat by 13 votes, and Cummins soon emptied — today nothing remains of the town.
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Montvale sprang up in 1884 when settlers relocated the earlier community of St. Elmo to a spot along the Shafter Military Trail, an old road running from Fort Concho. Within a few years it had a school, a platted townsite, a Methodist church, a hotel, a post office, and a cluster of stores and shops. But the creation of Sterling City as county seat in 1891 drained the town's fortunes, and today only a community cemetery marks where it stood.