Bastrop
According to Ed Blackburn, Jr. (2006:31), the first jail in Bastrop County was built in 1839. It is believed that it was a two-story log building 11 ft. by 18 ft. that may have been built in the “traditional dungeon design.” Blackburn uses this term often, but I have not been able to find out what that means.
McDade
Audrey Rother is a member of the McDade Historical Society and she told me that there used to be a calaboose in McDade. Today, she showed me where it once stood and the original key. She learned about it from her Grandfather and she made a sketch based on what she remembers him saying about it. It was a small wooden building with only one room. The door and windows had metal bars and food was passed to the prisoners through an opening at the bottom of the door. Her sketch estimates it at about 8 x 8 feet.
Sketch of McDade Calaboose by Audrey Rother
Paige
Photo courtesy of Doris Goerner
According to Andy Wolf, resident of McDade, there was a small calaboose in Paige, Texas near the railroad tracks. I drove there and did not see one. However, there is a small building near the railroad tracks that is the right size for a calaboose. The door is offset to the left and that is typical of some floor plans. There were no Sanborn maps available for Paige at the time of this project. Today, while visiting Audrey Rother at the museum in McDade, I was given a few pages from A History of Paige, Texas and Vicinity by Doris Goerner Laake (published by Eakin Press in 1983). This book has a picture of the old Paige calaboose and it is definitely not the one that aroused my suspicion.
It was a small wooden building with only one room and a door in the front. According to Ms Goerner (Page 21), the locals believe that the calaboose was built around 1879. It was 7 x 9 feet in size (63 square feet) with two barred windows. On one night there were eleven men in it at one time because of fighting. “For years, the jailhouse was the main attraction for visitors to Paige. In the 1930s and later, the Austin to Houston bus drivers always pointed it out to their passengers as they passed by.” Mrs. Rother used to drive by it every day while delivering the mail. She said it eventually collapsed.
Smithville
The Sanborn maps dated 1900 (Sheet 1), 1905 (Sheet 3), and 1909 (Sheet 3) depict a small iron clad calaboose in Smithville, Texas. It was behind City Hall located at 113 Olive Street and straddled the border of lots 15 and 16 in city block 33 very close to an alley that divided the block. It was still there in 1905 (Sheet 3), 1909 (Sheet 3), and 1915 (Sheet 2). The last Sanborn map for Smithville was published in October of 1915. On the Sanborn map for that year it was referred to as an iron clad city jail. City Hall was gone and in its place was the Fire Department at 113/114 Olive Street. The only evidence of this calaboose today is the concrete foundation that is located on private property.
Smithville 1900
Smithville 1915