One Room Jail - Texola, Oklahoma
With the addition of a tombstone-like monument to the Texola Class of 1939, it’s easy to picture the jail as a crypt, especially at night.
This story is part one of my January 2022 road trip to Las Vegas. Read about our others stops here:
For my then-fiancée's 28th birthday I bought her a ticket to the Get Your Teach On conference in Las Vegas, and the road trip from Tulsa to Sin City doubled as an opportunity to explore some roadside attractions along the way.
It’s a bucket list goal for me to road trip Route 66 all the way from Chicago to Santa Monica, and while we did have a bit of a time crunch to adhere to, this past weekend still served as a nice preview of that future journey. We didn’t actually drive the true Route 66, but I-40 follows it fairly closely so we got to make a few awesome detours along the way.
After leaving Tulsa Friday after work, our first stop was at the One Room Jail in Texola, Oklahoma. Texola itself is a ghost town that I have every intention of returning to in the near future, but at 9:45 at night with 966 miles to go, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to explore.
We did absolutely no research or planning for our trip, and I simply kept an eye on Google Maps for attractions along the way. “One Room Jail” immediately caught my eye.
Inside the one-room jail is a monument to famous outlaws, though it’s unlikely that any of them were ever imprisoned in Texola.
This one-room cinderblock jail was constructed sometime prior to 1910 in Texola, near the Texas border. The exact date is hard to say with certainty.
Texola once boasted some 500 people in the early 20th century but has dwindled to a meager 30ish residents, leaving the town infrastructure crumbling.
Dozens of rotting abandoned buildings with few signs of life welcome you to this ghost town, which was all the more creepy since we were visiting at 9:45 p.m. with a 28 degree wind chill from the approaching cold front.
After popping the trunk to grab our coats, we turned around and were startled by a massive Rottweiler. Needless to say my hand was on my sidearm immediately, but he ended up being the sweetest dog on the planet. He also ruined my white sweater, but I’ll trade a shirt for a surprise dog hug any day.
I jokingly told Charity the dog was the old jail house guard dog’s ghost, come to warn us not to enter.
The jail itself sits in an otherwise empty field, across from a shuttered building with a broke down box truck in the front yard that somebody wrote “pray” across.
In front of the jail is a tombstone-style monument to the Texola senior class of 1939, a class of 13 students. Why they placed the monument at the jail instead of the school is unclear, but then again, I have no idea where the school even is/was or if it still stands.
The jail itself appears to have been a simple local lockup with no famous occupants or particularly unique history. What makes it special is simply the fact that there’s no others like it anywhere nearby (at least not that I’ve ever heard of), and that it’s in a creepy abandoned town in the middle of nowhere with easy highway access.
For a quick ten-minute detour, we had a blast. If you’re ever in the Texola area, I definitely recommend stopping by, especially at night.
One thing’s for sure, I’ll be back to Texola someday soon to do some more research and speak to the locals.
