HUNTSVILLE, Texas — From outside the front door of the Texas Prison Museum, you can clearly see the Holliday Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice surrounded by towering walls. Inside the museum, you can get a rare look inside those walls.
"This model allows us to expose what the inside of that prison looks like and we have an opportunity to share with them where incidents that have occurred over the years there and where certain current events still occur, such as executions are still carried out," said museum director David Stacks.
The model is one of the first stops for museum visitors, who have room to explore in nearly 8,000 square feet of exhibit space.
"We do tell the history, the story of the Texas prison system, from when it first started in 1848, when it was commissioned to be made into a state agency up to current day for the most part," Stacks said. "The community, back in the early '80s, came up with this idea that, you know, 'We got all this history of the prison system, we got all these artifacts, let's create a museum. '"
Arguably, the most infamous exhibit is the electric chair used from 1924 until 1964 to execute 361 men.
"Old Sparky is the nickname it has. It was certainly not the best way to carry out execution. Thank goodness I think we've come a long way from that," Stacks said. "Some of the history that TDC has had has been good. Some of it's been bad. But we believe history is important. And we don't change history, we tell it as it is."
Many of the exhibits spotlight the ingenuity of the incarcerated – from the illegal (think homemade weapons) to the incredible, like a chess set carved out of soap.
"They have a lot of time. They have the ability to exercise some skills that they may not have ever known they had before, whether it was sketching something out with a pencil .... whether it be painting, whether it be crocheting, whatever it is," Stacks said. "Or finding more crude ways to carry out criminal acts. They're very ingenious and I think there's a lot of things here in this museum that speak to that.
A painting of Bonnie & Clyde made with coffee grounds, for example, or furniture painstakingly crafted. You can also learn about the prison rodeo, guard uniforms through the years and the famous and infamous who’ve passed through the Texas prison system.
"Our mission is to educate the people of Texas, the United States and the world about the Texas prison system," Stacks said. "We do hope that when they leave here, they've learned something about the prison system that they never thought occurred to them before."
For more information about the Texas Prison Museum, click here.