The Montgomery County Courthouse in downtown Conroe is an Art Deco limestone building completed in 1936, in the prosperity of the Conroe oil boom, with the county jail built into its fourth and fifth floors. The county is older than its seat. It was created by the Congress of the Republic of Texas on 14 December 1837, the third county the Republic made, and its first seat was the town of Montgomery, fifteen miles to the west, where two log cabins and then a two-story wooden building served as courthouses. In 1889, after an election, the seat moved to Conroe, then a sawmill town of about 300 people. Conroe was eight years old. The Houston lumberman Isaac Conroe, a Northern-born former Union cavalry officer, had opened a sawmill on Stewarts Creek in 1881 and then moved it to the International-Great Northern Railroad, where the mill became a station called Conroe's Switch.
When the county seat arrived, his house served as the temporary courthouse until the first courthouse on the present site was finished in 1891, built of red brick made in Conroe, as was the jail across the street. That building was plastered over in 1909.
In 1934 the commissioners court voted for a larger courthouse, and the present one is attributed to the Houston architect Joseph Finger. Wings were added in the mid-1960s as Conroe and the county grew.
Getting there
30.3117, -95.4576
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop is an audio tour guide app that tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
