LIVE OAK COUNTY
COURTHOUSE HISTORY
By Terry
Jeanson
There were several settlements in the Live
Oak County area before the county was organized in 1856. These
included On-the-Sulphur, for its location on Sulphur Creek, which
became a stage stop on the line between Corpus
Christi and San Antonio
in 1846. (The settlement was also called Puenta de la Piedra (Rock
Bridge) by the Spanish after a nearby natural rock bridge over the
Nueces River.) The nearby settlements of Fox’s Nation (later Gussettville)
and Echo were established in the 1850s. The U.S. Army set up Fort
Merrill to protect residents from Indian attacks and after the fort
was abandoned in 1855, the increased population justified the organization
of a new county. That year, settlers in Gussettville
petitioned the state legislature and in 1856, Live
Oak County, named for the prominent trees in the area, was formed
from San Patricio and Nueces counties. In the same year, land near
the settlement on Sulphur Creek was donated for a townsite named
Oakville and it became
the county seat.
The county’s first courthouse was built in Oakville
in 1857. It was a one-story, forty foot square, Greek Revival style
building made of ashlar limestone blocks with three-bay façades
and built by Joseph Bartlett, who also built the county’s first
jail the same year. In 1879-80, a second story with a hipped roof
and front porches were added, designed by John Tompson. A new jail
of stone with two stories was built in 1885. A second courthouse
was built in Oakville
in 1888. The first courthouse was eventually bought by Walter Rosebrock
who later demolished it sometime between 1938 and 1940. After decades
of neglect, the 1885 jail was restored in 2007 (now known as the
Jailhouse Inn) and sits in a park surrounded by other historic Oakville
structures.
In 1912, land
developer George Washington West donated his ranchland and $100,000
for a townsite and right of way to the railroad. The town he helped
establish was named George West
in his honor and the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad (known
as the “Sausage Line,”) arrived by 1913. He donated $75,000 toward
building a courthouse plus additional funds to build a hotel, a
school, highways, bridges and public utilities in an effort to have
the county seat moved to his new town. After an election in 1918,
the county seat was moved to George
West the following year. County offices were located in various
buildings around town until the county’s third and current courthouse
was completed in George West in
1919. It’s a Classical Revival style building of brick and concrete
with Corinthian columns which are supported upon a podium several
feet above the ground and extended through the two main floor levels.
This courthouse was the last one designed by noted Texas courthouse
architect Alfred Giles before his death in 1920 and it has many
similarities to the courthouse he designed for Brooks County in
1914. A modern one-story annex, designed by Fort
Worth architect Wyatt C. Hedrick, was built to the west of the
courthouse in 1956. The 1919 courthouse had a jail on the third
floor with a gallows that was never used. The jail was moved to
a new building constructed in 1962 and attached to the southeast
corner of the courthouse. A remodeling of the courthouse took place
in 1986 and again between 1988 and 1992.
Terry
Jeanson, July 23, 2014
Sources:
County
history from The Handbook of Texas Online,
Courthouse and jail history from The Texas Historical Commission’s
Texas Historic Sites Atlas at http://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/shell-county.htm,
The People’s Architecture: Texas Courthouses, Jails, and Municipal
Buildings by Willard B. Robinson, 1983,
Wanted: Historic Jails of Texas by Edward A. Blackburn, Jr., and
The Courthouses of Texas by Mavis P.Kelsey Sr. and Donald H. Dyal,
2nd edition, 2007.
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