Old Blanco County Jail
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The jail, commissioned by County Judge A. W. Moursund in November 1876 and assumed to have been built in 1877, is one of the oldest buildings in Blanco. The jail was only used until 1890 when the county seat was moved to Johnson City. The steel jail cells, which cost $819, were moved to the jail in Johnson City. Although there is a little actual record of prisoners as Blanco was not incorporated as a city until much later, an iron ring for unruly prisoners was anchored to the floor.
The jail did figure in one notorious frontier episode, the infamous Al Lackey killing spree. On August 24, 1885, Lackey set out with his rifle in the Pedernales River area to exterminate his own family. He successively killed his niece, brother, an elderly couple related to him, his daughter, and another relative, and nearly succeeded in killing his wife, son, and a neighbor. Captured in Johnson City, he was brought to Blanco and incarcerated in this jail. Two days later a mob gathered at Brushy Top, rode south to Blanco, yanked Lackey from the jail, and hanged him from a large live oak north of town, still standing on the west side of what is now Highway 281.
The jail originally opened into the square via a low, narrow doorway in the center of the east facade, closed by a wooden metal-covered door anchored by heavy wrought-iron hinges, but now covered by the back of the Comparet Building. Plans called for a two-story building, but it was built with only one story. The one-room jail, measuring 18 x 14 feet, has 4 iron-barred windows. The jail was constructed with 2-foot-thick limestone walls tied together with steel pins; the foundation is 3 feet thick. There was no provision for heating or lighting in the jail. Other than being used as a barbershop for a time, it has been mostly vacant or used for storage. It functioned as a collector’s shop accessible through the Mercantile in the late 1990s.