Clairemont, Texas

Clairemont is located in Kent County about 15 miles west of Jayton on US 380 and Texas 208. I found this to be one of the most picturesque (in the ghost town sense) of the ghost towns I have visited. Below are presented a number of photos, including a comparison between Baker's photo in 1980 and subsequent photos taken in 1999 and 2007 of the "street scene." According to the Texas State Historical Association, Clairemont served as the Kent County seat from 1892 to 1954. When the railroad came through the county and missed Clairemont, the town's fate was sealed, and it was largely abandoned after 1954

More history of the town of Clairemont along with more photos can be found at the TexasEscapes.com website.


This is the street scene photo from Baker's book. It was taken in 1980.



This is a photo from a very similar vantage point taken on October 31, 1999. I could not get to the exact same spot as Baker did (note the building and awning in the left foreground in the 1980 photo) because that area was considerably more overgrown than it was 19 years ago. To stand where Baker did would have required standing among head-high brambles! Note the differences between 1980 and 1999. First off, and obviously, the Texaco sign is completely gone. Not even the pole from which it hung remains. The light fixture that would have illuminated the gas pumps is still there, twisting in the wind. In the left center of the 1999 photo is a pole that looks like it would have held a sign, and this same pole is just barely visible in the 1980 photo (below the foreground awning just above the Coca-Cola sign—it's mostly obscured by the pole holding up the right side of the awning). Other than that, the gas station building hasn't really deteriorated all that much. The cafe on the left is a different story. The Coca-Cola sign with the name of the cafe on top is gone. As far as the sign on the front of the cafe, in the upper photo (at the time of Baker's visit), the name of the cafe is still readable. With a magnifying glass, I could make out the name of the cafe as "Barkley's." It was not readable, even when standing right below it, when I visited in 1999. The darker portions to each side of the front-mounted cafe sign were Coca-Cola signs, but both were missing when I visited. Most significantly about the cafe is that the right front corner of the building had collapsed, opening the innards considerably more to the weather. Farther down on this page I have two photos from the interiors of these two buildings.


This is a view of the same scene taken on January 10, 2007 by Brian Garner who saw this site and kindly contributed this photograph. Barkley's cafe, which was once to the left from this vantage point, is completely gone, whether by its own collapse or by purposeful demolition is unknown. Probably the latter, given how clean the site now looks. Also note that the signpost in front of the gas station, which had nothing hanging from it in the 1980 and 1999 photos, did have something hanging from it at the time of this photo more than seven years later. The sign says simply "Clairemont." Note also that the tall, antenna-like structure immediately behind the left side of the station in the 1999 photo is not present in the 2007 photo.


Here's the opposite view from the three photos above, also taken in October 1999. This is taken standing in front of the gas station and looking back at the structure one stands to the left of (as you face it) to obtain the photos above. While I could not tell exactly what the building in this photo once was, from the look of it, I would guess that it was probably a store.


The upper photo of these two photos is of the interior of the left side of the gas station. I liked the baseball cap sitting on the shelf. It's obviously much newer than the building. I didn't touch it! The lower photo is a seat from the interior of the cafe. It's quite torn up, but one can imagine its use not too many years ago.


Above and below are two closer-up photos of the gas station taken in 1999.



Here's a 1999 view of the gas station and cafe from the other side. Here it's easy to see that the gas station and cafe were not as close to each other as the other photos above make them appear. What's left of the sign over the cafe is hanging along its right side. I could not for the life of me make out what the sign once said, but as I noted above, magnifying the image in Baker's book reveals that the name of the cafe was "Barkley's."



The upper of these two photos on the left is of the old red stone jailhouse that Baker refers to in his book but does not provide a picture of. The photo was taken in 1999. It was still well preserved, and the interior is essentially just dirty. I went inside, and it seemed that a good sweep and mop followed by some paint would return the interior to useable condition. There is (as of early 2007) an effort afoot by the Kent County Historical Commission to save the jail. Read more about it here. The photo on the right was taken in 2007 and was sent to me on 12/4/07 by Chris Hogg, who has contributed to this page in the past. The building's appearance hasn't changed much, although there now appears to be a metal door. I'm told by the person who sent this photo that the county's historical society that vandalism and graffiti is an ongoing problem with these old buildings located in remote areas. The white splotches located here and there, particularly below the window to the left of the door, are attempts to cover up graffiti. The lower photo on the left is of the old Kent County courthouse, which lost its upper floor to a fire in April 1955. The remains were removed and a metal roof put in its place. The building was closed up and not in use at the time of my visit. A photo of what the courthouse looked like in 1939 when it still had all its original floors is shown at the TexasEscapes.com website.

These are two additional photos from Clairemont that I took on October 31, 1999. I have no idea what these buildings once were. The upper one has multiple entrances and looks like it could have been the home for several small stores or one large one, and it's another view of the building that stands opposite the gas station. The lower one looks like it might have been a single, free-standing business.

In his book, Baker includes an interior shot of the old post office, and it shows undelivered mail strewn about the floor. I could not find this building, or, at least, I could not find a building with mail strewn about. The exterior is not shown, so I couldn't compare with the extant buildings. One of the empty buildings I found could have been the post office, but I found no markings. I always wondered, though, why there would be any undelivered mail, anyway. It would seem that, since the United States Postal Service itself is still in existence, when the Clairemont post office was closed, any undelivered mail would have simply been moved to the next nearest post office and not simply left on the floor!

On October 14, 2003, I received an email from a fellow named Steven McFadin, who has a connection to Clairemont. Mr. McFadin's father was raised there, as was his father's mother, and his grandfather Marlin was the county commissioner until his early death from polio in 1951. At the time he was elected, Marlin was the youngest commissioner ever elected in Texas. Steven doesn't know if that record still stands. Steven's great aunt and uncle ran the now-gone cafe next to the former Texaco station.

On September 25, 2005, I received an email from another person with a connection to Clairemont:

I read with interest your comments about Clairemont, former county seat of Kent Co., in the panhandle area of Texas. I did a paper on the old jailhouse for a class at Texas Tech in the 1970's, and have always had a fondness for it. I read the old minutes of the county commissioners' court to get some information for my paper.

The jailhouse was constructed out of the local beautiful red sandstone, and was built around the pre-fabricated cell block. The cell block was there when I was researching the building, but you did not mention if it was still present when you were there in 1999. As you mentioned, the courthouse once had a second story, which had a bell-tower. There was once a jailbreak, and the escaped prisoner hid out in the bell tower for a couple of days before he was found.

The bright white trim that shows in your photo of the courthouse is new to me, and I hope it fades before long. Obviously someone is doing maintenance on it, so it is probably in private ownership. I recall that the jailhouse was owned by a private party, but I do not remember the name.

I love the old jailhouse, glad to see it is still in good repair.

On March 27, 2007, I received an email from a fellow name Chris Hogg who spent some time in Clairemont and sent me this commentary:

I was doing a little research on the old jail up at Clairemont, Texas. You mentioned the court house having once been a two story affair with a bell tower. The reason it is now a one story building is because the second story burned and the county had the remains removed and a metal roof put in its place. A closer inspection of both buildings will show you that people have no respect for the property of others. Many have carved their names in the old sand stone or painted on the buildings.

When I visited Clairemont, there was a man mowing around that old courthouse and the jail, he allowed us to go inside the jail and have a look. In the center of the room is a steel cage containing a walkway in front of two cells. The first thing that stood out was the old flat steel construction of the cells, the second thing that stood out was that the cell doors would have been locked with a padlock of sorts and the third thing was that there was no plumbing in the cells at all, but rather a place in the corner with a metal lid on it where you would put a bucket to do your “business” in.

The cage appears to have been some type of pre-fab thing that could have been taken inside piece by piece and put together or put together and then had the building built around it. I found no visible markings on it indicating who the manufacturer may have been but I do believe it to have been ordered from somewhere and shipped in. It is clear that the jail had a wood stove as evidenced by marks on the floor where the stove stood, directly under a cut out in the roof where the stove pipe went through. One thing that surprised me was outside the steel cage was a control box containing two levers which allowed the jailer to open each cell doors individually or both at once without entering the cage. No doubt this would have been cutting edge technology for the late 1890’s.

The thing that saddened me the most was to see the graffiti inside the building. Why people don’t have a little respect for not only things that don’t belong to them but for things of a historical value I’ll never understand. My mother and dad would have beaten me until my legs fell off if they ever heard of me tearing up something that didn’t belong to me. Guess that’s a sign of the modern times though.

On December 31, 2007, I received another email from someone with a connection to the town. It seems that a new business is in the offing:

Just thought I would drop you a line about the clean up that was done at the old store in Clairemont. A lot of those lots were purchased by a friend of mine. He actually lives there behind the old motel. He plans to open a store of sorts there. It will in all probability be a way side antique store & beverage stop. The old building was unsafe, so it was removed. Also as you might expect there were some rattlesnakes that had begun to call the old buildings home and they had to be eradicated. The biggest problem is in finding a suitable water source in the area. The fine sands result in well collapses necessitating well liners, which is pricey. He is a Pa. transplant with ties to the current owners of the Cooper Mt. ranch, which is located about 20 miles south. He would be interested in additional historic information that anyone can provide him with as he proceeds with his restoration efforts of what is left. Also he would be interested in purchasing the other lots that are there.