Historic Walker County

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The Texas Prison Museum proudly
displays the long history of the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice.
COURTESY OF MEREDITH AUSTIN.
center. The success came after extensive
fundraising and $300,000 from the Huntsville
City Council. The center strives to promote the
regional arts and cultural heritage of the area.
Mirroring the preservation efforts of the Gibbs-
Powell and Wynne home, the city of Huntsville’s
Main Street Program is responsible for the
revitalization and up-keep of Huntsville’s historic
city center. The 2007 “Cabin on the Square”
project represented one such initiative. Maggie
Farris Parker donated a historic cabin built around
1840 to the city in order to save it from
destruction. The historic cabin was moved from
the Alton Farris estate and placed in downtown
Huntsville. Active in the development of the
historic site were Harold Hutcheson, then manager
of the Main Street Program, Caroline Crimm of
SHSU, Neil Smith of TDCJ, and Mac Woodward of
the Sam Houston Memorial Museum. SHSU
history students and faculty dismantled the
Roberts-Farris Log Cabin, and inmates from the
Eastham Unit rebuilt it on the site thought to be
the location of the first building in Huntsville. 111
Additional local museums, which have
recently expanded, have garnered statewide
attention. The Texas Prison Museum had a
modest beginning in 1989, when it opened a
small site on the downtown square in Huntsville.
Thanks to extensive fundraising by Texas
Department of Criminal Justice employees, the
Prison Museum was able to develop an expansive
location near the Wynne Unit, just north of
Huntsville. Notable exhibits include a pistol
recovered from notorious gangsters Bonnie and
Clyde, artifacts from the now-extinct Texas
Prison Rodeo, and “Old Sparky”, the infamous
electric chair used in 361 executions.
While the Texas Prison Museum attracts
visitors with a glimpse into the lives of
society’s worst, another institution, the HEARTS
Veterans Museum, draws in visitors wanting to
remember and honor the country’s finest.
HEARTS, an acronym for “Helping Every
American Remember Through Serving” was
created by volunteer Charlotte Oleinik. It
began as a small display in a Huntsville antique
shop and is a now a permanent museum located
in a recently opened $2-million facility. A
Federal Emergency Management Agency grant
made this transformation possible, as the
building is also the planned evacuation center
for Walker County. 112
Recent hurricanes along the Texas Gulf Coast
made the need for an evacuation center in Walker
County pressing. Most striking was Hurricane
Rita, which made landfall near Beaumont and
wrought havoc along Interstate 45 in Walker
County in September 2005. The storm brought
down trees and cut off electricity in many
neighborhoods, but it also stranded thousands of
Houston motorists along the evacuation route.
Many churches in the local community opened
their doors to the evacuees, and two Red Cross
designated shelters were opened at First Baptist
Church and Family Faith Church. Many
Huntsville residents volunteered and even
opened their homes to those in need. Elkins Lake
resident, Nell Miller Smith, remembers going out
to the interstate with her husband, Don, and
offering help to a stranded family. “We offered the
family a place to take showers and a warm
meal—we just felt we needed to help.” This need
to help exemplified the sense of charity and
goodness in Huntsville. Hurricane Ike also deeply
affected Walker County in 2008 when massive
power outages left residents in the dark and
claimed the life of one of its residents. 113
Thankfully, however, the loss of life was
minimal during these storms and care was
provided by the ever-growing Huntsville Memorial
Hospital. The hospital’s tagline, “Down to earth
5 2 ✦ H I S T O R I C W A L K E R C O U N T Y