Buffalo Gap Kept Its Courthouse After It Lost the County Seat

Before Abilene held the courthouse, Taylor County government worked from Buffalo Gap. The county organized in 1878 and chose the settlement in the natural opening through the Callahan Divide as its seat. The gap had already made the place a useful route through the hills.

The old stone building at the center of today's village did two jobs. Completed in 1880, it held county offices and a courtroom downstairs, with jail cells upstairs. It served as Taylor County's courthouse until the seat moved to Abilene in 1883. Those courthouse and jail stories belong to one building, not two separate survivors.

The building stayed put after county government moved away. Its stone walls later held the Ernie Wilson Museum, with exhibits in the old courtroom and jail rooms. A Texas Historical Commission marker still identifies the two jobs under one roof: courthouse below, jail above.

Today the building anchors the Taylor County History Center at 133 William Street. Its survival gives Buffalo Gap's county-seat story a room you can still walk into. The courtroom and cells explain the old arrangement better than two separate marker summaries ever could.