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ATASCOSA
COUNTY COURTHOUSE
County Seat - Jourdanton, Texas
Atascosa County
has had four courthouses:
1912
- Jourdanton
1885
- Pleasanton
1857 - Pleasanton
1856
- Amphion
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The
1912 Atascosa County Courthouse
TE Photo, 2002 |
The Present
Atascosa County Courthouse - Jourdanton,
Texas
Date - 1912
Architect - Henry T. Phelps
Style - Mission-style
Material - Brick and stone |
Atascosa
County Courthouse as it appeared in 1939
Photo courtesy of TXDoT |
| "An oil
painting of the 1885 Atascosa County courthouse that stood
in Pleasanton. The legend*
says that when the county seat was moved to Jourdanton in 1910, this
building was lifted from its foundation and moved there. It has since
been demolished. This painting hangs in the Longhorn Museum in Pleasanton,
Texas."
- Terry
Jeanson, October 30, 2006 |
Atascosa
County Courthouse Forum
*I
was pleased to find your page with several renderings of the Atascosa
County court house, past and present. I was rather amused at the "legend"
you repeated about moving the court house from Pleasanton to Jourdanton.
Actually, only the records were moved (stolen, as I heard it )
and the old court house in Pleasanton was still in its place when
I was a child, serving as the Pleasanton City Hall. By the time it
was demolished to make way for the widening of US 281 through town
in the mid 1950's, the upper floor had been condemned, as I recall,
but the city offices were still housed there. The present city hall
stands on what is left of the old grounds of the Pleasanton Court
House.
That "legend" may be a version of a story a gentleman told on himself
. When he first came to Atascosa County, it was about the time that
the county seat had been moved, and feelings were still very raw about
that event. It so happened that at least two other county seats were
being moved about the same time, and this hapless gentleman suggested
to a group of Pleasanton citizens at a "friendly" gabfest that perhaps
they should just put all the courthouses on railroad cars and roll
them around that way until they decided for sure where they should
go. He said that he hardly got the words out of his mouth before every
man within hearing of him had drawn their pistols on him. Only after
the most abject and profuse apology was he able to convince those
men to holster their weapons. He never made that mistake again. I
happened to have read this story just today in a book published by
the Atascosa History Committee in 1985. Thanks again for a good page.
- Marcy Porter, May 06, 2008 |
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| Across the street
from the current Atascosa County Courthouse in Jourdanton is the replica
of the first Atascosa County Courthouse (c.1856) at Amphion.
Photo
courtesy Terry
Jeanson, October 2004 |
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