COKE COUNTY MUSEUM BRINGS WILD WEST BACK

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Submitted by Jo Collier - jomar@wcc.net
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COKE COUNTY MUSEUM BRINGS WILD WEST BACK

By Sheerri Deatherage, Staff Writer
San Angelo Standard-Times, 12 Feb 1990

Robert Lee - A stiff rope dangling from the Coke County Museum
ceiling reminds visitors that the Wild West isn't so far away in
space and time.

An unsuspecting museum-goes climbing the stairs might gasp when he
or she glimpses the noose, hanging behind sturdy iron lattice work.

Not many years ago, the old Coke County Jail became a museum.  A 
few decades before that, the state of Texas outlawed hanging, 
making the gallows nothing more than a conversation piece for Coke
County inmates.

But in 1907 when the jail was built, the trap door and spring
apparatus at its heart offered the highest standards of 
convenience and technology for hanging criminals sentenced to 
death.

"It's never been used."  Coke County Historical Commission 
chairwoman Fran Lomas said on a recent visit.  Hanging was 
outlawed in the mid-'20s, before a capital offence here warranted 
the noose's use.

Coke County closed the jail in the mid-1960s, but the historical
commission re-opened it in 1975 and added a new rope over the 
sealed trap door.

Other relics in the small, crowded building include a post office 
window from the now deserted Edith community, a 100-year-old baby
coffin and a moonshine still found near Tennyson.

But the one that most uniquely represents Coke County is a heavy 
hunk of barbed wire fused together when feuding ranchers set a
wagon full of the stuff on fire in 1883, Lomas said.

"The biggest fence war was south of Robert Lee," she said.  Smoke
from the wagon fires supposedly was seen miles away in Robert Lee.

The museum houses bits and pieces of Coke County history that 
typify the Old West.  But the historical commission struggles to 
keep the building in good repair on donations and the #300 a year
it gets from Coke County, Lomas said.

This year, however, county commissioners boted to fund an expensive
reroofing project.  The leaking jail roof was redone in authentic 
terne metal, Lomas said.

Coke County history buffs also hope a Texas Historical Commission
representative, expected to visit the museum soon, can suggest 
economical ways to halt light damage that some delicate artifacts
suffer from the sunshine through the building's many windows.

"People will see that it's better taken care of," Lomas said, 
hoping more Coke County residents will donate antiques to the 
museum.

Permission granted by San Angelo Standard-Times for publication in 
the Coke County TXGenWeb Archives