Hico

The first Sanborn fire insurance map for Hico, Texas was published in 1893.  No jails or calabooses were seen on that particular map.  The first map to depict a calaboose was published in 1903 and it depicts a small, one-story wooden building in City Block 26.  The block had been divided into three sections and the calaboose was in the northeast corner of the section that can be best identified as the 200 block of Pecan Street and the 400 block of Avenue A.  The section immediately to the north was a wagon yard and the railroad tracks were due east.  Occupying the same block was a wooden dwelling and a wooden structure that the mappers did not identify.  This calaboose does not appear on the 1898 Sanborn map.  Thus, it was built sometime between 1898 and 1903.

Hico 1903

In 1907, the wooden building was replaced by a stone calaboose in the same area.  The stone calaboose served the town until circa 1922 when it is labelled as vacant on the Sanborn map.  In 1928, the city purchased a metal cage from E. T. Barnum Iron and Metal Works in Detroit and that was the lockup until 1964.  The location where the metal cage was placed is not known for certain at this time.  It is currently housed in the Billy the Kid Museum in downtown Hico.

Hico 1907