|
The Five Courthouses of Walker County The first Walker county courthouse was available for county commissioners court meetings in July 1848. The building was finally completed in the center of the Huntsville public square in 1850. Because of a defective foundation, a second courthouse had replaced it by 1853.
Repairs made in 1856 did not hold long, the design for the third county courthouse featured a grand jour house in the southwest corner of the grounds rather than inside the courthouse itself. Dubbed “The Little Courthouse,” the grand jour house was completed and in use in 1861. Construction on the main courthouse was interrupted by the Civil War. It was finished in 1869 but major repairs were necessary within a couple of years.
On the first day of 1888 the grand jury house was again called into service after the main courthouse burned. The commissioners court selected Eugene T. Heiner of Houston to design a new building. The construction contract was awarded to D. N. Darling of Palestine. Darling set to work in late spring and erected Heiner’s vision, related with Victorian gothic, Renaissance revival and Italianate details. That structure, the fourth walker county courthouse gradually welcomed back the social and religious groups of the county. Other uses included the Walker County Fair of 1912 and a lecture series sponsored by Texas A&M University in 1914. The interior of the building burned in 1968. At that time, it was one of the 25 oldest courthouses in the State of Texas.
The fifth Walker County courthouse, a modern brick and steel structure, was completed in 1970. It remained in service that the dawn of the 21st century. (2000) |
|
 |
 1888 Courthouse |
 Walker County
The earliest known inhabitants of this area were the Cenis and Bidai (Bedias) Indians. Spanish explores began to arrive n 1542, followed by the French in 1687. The area was thinly populated by Spanish and Mexican settlers until the early 1830s when colonists came from the United States. Brothers pleasant and Ephraim gray established a trading post near the site about 1835 or 1836. Naming it for their home in Huntsville, Alabama. The region was included in neighboring counties until Walker County was created by the first legislature of the state of Texas in 1846. It was named for U.S. Senator Robert J. Walker, who introduced legislation for Texas’ annexation. The state penitentiary was established at Huntsville in 1849.
With the arrival of the railroads in the 1870s, depot towns flourished. Huntsville narrowly avoided the fat of other towns bypassed by the railroads when residents hurriedly raised funds to build a spur. Cotton never regained its pre-civil war stature and lumber and livestock became important businesses in the 20th century.
The heritage of Walker County, form native Americans to frontier settlers and U.S. citizens, is on of independent spirit and determination. (1999) |
|
  |
|
Agricultural products, primarily cotton, were shipped out by steamboat form
the late 1840s when the Civil War began, R. J. Walker declined to support eh
confederacy. The Texas Legislature renamed the county in 1863 for Texas
Ranger Samuel H. Walker. Martial law was declared in the county for 60 days
in 1871 because of reconstruction-era racial violence.
