April 2, 2014 (by Bill Moore)

Today, I continued working on adding data to my new website.  There is a lot to do and some changes will be made as I discover what format is the most friendly to my audience.  Spend most of my time this morning on vanished jails and suspicious structures.  I checked all of the Sanborn fire insurance maps for Texas that I have access to and identified past jails and calabooses in many towns.  For some towns, I don’t have maps that are fairly recent.  Therefore, it is possible that a calaboose was constructed after the date of the maps available to me and, in some cases, one might be still standing but the only way to find out is call various offices in these towns.  Usually, I call the library, Chamber of Commerce, City Hall, local museums, historical societies, and the police department.  I have found a few calabooses still standing by doing this.  They are arranged under the heading “Vanished” in alphabetical order by county.  I am considering linking the towns to the local chambers of commerce.

The suspicious structure section contains photos and information about buildings I saw that at first resembled a calaboose.  Most of these turned out to have been constructed for other purposes such as bank vaults and city buildings.  However, there are a few that I have not ruled out yet.  This section is to depict those structures that are similar to a calaboose and also to document other types of interesting buildings as well, especially the types such as the one in Pendleton.

I would appreciate any comments on these and other sections.  It will probably be several weeks before I have entered most of the data I have accumulated.

 

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