(Until 2025, this was the oldest Working Jail in U.S.)
For many years, the San Saba County jail was the oldest active jail in Texas. In recent years, it has also gained the distinction of being the oldest active jail in the United States. The county’s law enforcement requirements have long exceeded jail capabilities and continued use is a tribute to the efforts of the Sheriff’s Office to maintain it within Texas Jail Commission Standards and to travel long hours each week transporting prisoners to other counties.
Within the county of San Saba, the jail is also the oldest public building. The jail was built in 1883 of blue limestone at a structure cost of $13,000 and an additional $500 for the lot. Construction was typical of the late 1800s in being a gothic-like design featuring massive stone walls with a three-floor tower in the style of a castle. The original structure’s thick stone fortress-like walls had a 12-foot board fence constructed to add additional security after an 1886 jailbreak. The current chain-link sally port area on the south side is used to disembark prisoners and provide them a recreational space.
As was the practice in the 1800s and first part of the 1900s, the Sheriff, who was also often the jailer, and his family lived on the ground floor of the jail in an apartment. Officers’ wives and children often served as jailers, cooks, office deputies, and drivers for understaffed Sheriffs. These families had to live with the inmates, and the wife or oldest child sometimes provided a shotgun for the stairways leading to the cells upstairs when the Sheriff had to deal with unruly prisoners.
Security was always an issue when jailing, retrieving, and controlling inmates. Life in the jail was stimulating as the Sheriff did what he could to keep food riots, fights, suicide, and escape attempts under control. The San Saba jail has echoed to shouts of fighting, cries of the insane, drunks, angry voices of family members trying to argue relatives out of jail, prisoners’ shouts and sing-songs, plus the ever-busy radio and ringing telephone.
In the jail’s early days, the possibility of disaster was always lurking just around the corner, and the Sheriff had to keep prisoners friendly, if possible, but always under control. In the days before the Miranda warning, the rise of civil rights lawsuits under the 14th Amendment, and the Texas Jail Standards Act, the county jail was the Sheriff’s castle. Perhaps to increase psychological impact and deter crime, many older Texas jails were built in the 1800’s to look like Gothic castles or fortresses, and behind their walls the Sheriff’s power could be medieval as well. Local custom tacitly permitted Sheriffs to use force in their jails provided they acted with discretion. Most people expected the jail to be kept under stern control.
It was not until over 80 years after the San Saba jail was built that the legislature in 1965 established the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standard and Education (TCLEOSE) agency. By 1970, TCLEOSE had established a mandatory program of standardized law enforcement training, certification, and recertification required of Sheriff’s Deputies and every law officer in the state.
Likewise, Texas jails were unregulated until 1957 when they became loosely supervised by a division of the Texas State Health Department.
NOTE in 2025, the Jail began to have structure issues and is currently not being used until those issues can be resolved.