Huntsville, Texas

Everything Huntsville is known for

28 songs mention this city 2 artists from here

Music in Huntsville

Songs About Huntsville

Walls Of Huntsville
Cross Canadian Ragweed
96%
"Now the walls of Huntsville keep me under lock and chain"
Huntsville
Merle Haggard
95%
"They're taking me down to Huntsville, I'm bringing in a load of time"
Pot in Huntsville
Carson Jeffrey
95%
"I sell that pot in Huntsville, there's a prison cross the road"
Huntsville
Scooter Brown Band
95%
"And now I'm sittin' here in Huntsville, shackled, chained, and charged"
The Story Of Bonnie And Clyde
Flatt & Scruggs
93%
"In a Huntsville prison, where he got his parole"
Hills of Old Juarez
Tom Russell
92%
"I'm in Huntsville Prison"
pot in huntsville
carson jefferey
90%
huntsville
merle haggard & the strangers
85%
Gen. Sam Houston
Ray Wylie Hubbard
85%
Huntsville Prison Rodeo
Jesse Dayton
83%
"Huntsville Prison Rodeo"
Christmas in Huntsville
Jason Boland & The Stragglers
81%
"Christmas in Huntsville"
Up In Texas
Midland
75%
"Sam Houston star-spangled it"
Down South
Chalie Boy & Tite
57%
"From Houston to Huntsville"
Walls Of Hunstville
Cross Canadian Ragweed
53%
"Now the walls of Huntsville keep me under lock and chain"
Weed with Willie
Toby Keith
52%
"The party was Huntsville, it was after the show"
Nashville
Cody Wayne
51%
"Huntsville, Texas, Cody Johnson"
Charmin’ Betsy
Henry Thomas
50%
"I went down to Huntsville town"
Ellis Unit One
Steve Earle
50%
Hardin Wouldn’t Run
Johnny Cash
50%
Back Home in Huntsville Again
Bobby Bare
50%

Showing top 20 of 28 songs

Artists From Huntsville

C
Cody Johnson
country
A
Aimee Bobruk
singer-songwriter

Rivers & Roads in Song near Huntsville

Songs written about the waterways and highways that run near Huntsville.

Interstate 45 8 songs Trinity River 11 songs Kickapoo Creek 4 songs U.S. Route 59 9 songs Brazos River 42 songs

Musical Heritage

The Goree Girls on the Radio RoadyGoat

1848

The Goree Girls were women incarcerated at the Goree State Farm who formed a country string band in the nineteen forties. They performed on a prison radio program carried by station WBAP and appeared at the Texas Prison Rodeo, reaching listeners far beyond the walls. Their polished public image offered the prison system a story of talent and rehabilitation, but every performance occurred under confinement and official control. The group complicates the usual male image of Texas prison history: women prisoners were musicians, broadcasters, workers, and public performers, even as the state decided where they lived and when they could be heard.

Where the Man in Black Started Playing Prisons RoadyGoat

1957

Long before the famous live album recorded behind bars in California, the man in black played his very first concert for prisoners right here in Huntsville. Texas Public Radio identifies a 1957 performance for inmates at the Huntsville prison as that first show, more than a decade before the 1968 record that made playing prisons a defining part of his legend. The response from the men inside stayed with him and shaped the rest of his career. It is a quiet, important footnote that this East Texas prison town owns a real early chapter in one of the biggest stories in American music. (Source: Texas Public Radio, Texas Matters.)

Live, From Inside the Walls RoadyGoat

1938

Starting in 1938, listeners across Texas tuned in every week to something genuinely strange and wonderful: a variety show broadcast live from inside the Huntsville prison. It was called Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls, carried on the powerful Fort Worth station WBAP, and it featured inmate country bands, gospel quartets, comedy, jazz, dancing, and actors. At its peak it reached millions of listeners and won broadcasting's Peabody Award in 1940. What makes it more than a feel-good music story is the tension underneath: the prison promoted the show partly to rehabilitate inmates, and partly to soften its own reputation against public reports of brutality. Either way, for a decade, the most famous thing on the air some nights was the sound of men and women singing from behind bars. (Sources: Texas Highways; Texas Standard; The Marshall Project.)

The Goree Girls: Country Stars Behind Bars RoadyGoat

1940

In the 1940s, a group of women locked up at Huntsville's Goree Unit did something almost unheard of: they became radio stars. Eight of them formed the Goree All-Girl String Band. Most had little musical background, but they taught themselves guitar, fiddle, banjo, and steel guitar while working their prison jobs by day. They performed on the radio program Thirty Minutes Behind the Walls and at the Texas Prison Rodeo, and listeners across the country wrote in with fan letters, money, and even marriage proposals. They became one of the earliest all-female country bands in America. The bittersweet part came later: after release, most of the women hid their connection to the band, because admitting the fame meant admitting where they had been. (Sources: Goree All Girl String Band, Wikipedia; Texas Standard; Texas Monthly.)

History of Huntsville

Old Sparky and Centralized Execution RoadyGoat

1848

Before nineteen twenty three, Texas counties carried out their own executions, commonly by hanging. The legislature then centralized state executions at Huntsville and selected electrocution. Prison workers built the chair later nicknamed Old Sparky. From nineteen twenty four through nineteen sixty four, Texas executed three hundred sixty one men by electrocution. After court challenges halted the old system, Texas adopted a revised law and resumed executions in nineteen eighty two using lethal injection. Old Sparky is now an artifact at the Texas Prison Museum, a physical reminder of how punishment moved from county courthouses into one state-run chamber.

Eleven Days in Hell RoadyGoat

1848

In the summer of nineteen seventy four, prisoner Fred Gómez Carrasco and two accomplices seized hostages inside the Walls Unit education building. The siege lasted eleven days, earning the later name Eleven Days in Hell. Negotiations, improvised weapons, escape plans, and intense media attention kept Huntsville waiting. On August third, the captors attempted to leave behind a rolling shield made with hostages and materials from the prison. Gunfire ended the breakout; Carrasco, another prisoner, and two hostages died. The event exposed failures inside a supposedly controlled fortress and became one of the most documented, rather than merely legendary, crises in Texas prison history.

From Convict Leasing to Prison Industry RoadyGoat

1848

Texas prisons long treated labor as punishment and revenue. After the Civil War, convict leasing placed prisoners under private contractors in conditions notorious for violence and death. The state later shifted toward state-owned farms and industries, using incarcerated labor in cotton fields, livestock operations, textile shops, canneries, and factories. Prison-made goods have included clothing, furniture, license plates, and supplies for public agencies. Texas Correctional Industries continues prison manufacturing today. The system's language changed from leasing to state production and job training, but Huntsville's history requires asking who benefits from compulsory labor, how workers are protected, and what preparation genuinely helps after release.

Sam Houston

1793

Born March 2, 1793, in Rockbridge County, Va.; son of Samuel and Elizabeth Houston. Moved to Tennessee in 1807 with widowed mother and her family. In 1813 joined U.S. Army under Gen. Andrew Jackson, with whom he formed lifetime friendship and political ties. In Tennessee, taught school, kept a store, served in U.S. Congress, was state governor. In 1829, after his young bride left him, resigned as governor and went westward. Settling in 1833 in Nacogdoches, became a leader in cause of Texas independence from Mexico. Elected March 4, 1836, to command the Army of the Republic, engineered retrograde movement that led to victory of San Jacinto, which won Texas independence. President of the Republic, 1836-1838 and 1841-1844, he was senator after annexation. In 1859 he was elected governor, and served until secession. In 1861 he declined to take oath of office in Confederacy, retiring instead after a quarter-century of service to his state. However, he did not oppose Confederate army enlistment of his young son, Sam Houston, Jr. While the Civil War continued, he died on July 26, 1863, at his home, "Steamboat House," Huntsville. With him was his family, to hear his last words to his wife: "Texas--, Margaret, Texas--".

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Houston, Sam

1847

General of the army which won the war for Texas Independence, 1836, and first President of the Republic, 1836-1838, Sam Houston was one of the most controversial and colorful figures in Texas history. In his eventful career, Houston had resided in Nacogdoches, Liberty, Houston, and Austin. He and his wife Margaret (Lea) built this house, "Woodland", in 1847 to provide themselves with a town place. With enthusiasm, he wrote to a friend that the new home was a "bang up place!" and that the climate was "said to be healthy". Houston and his wife lived at Woodland while he was a U.S. Senator, 1846-1859, perhaps the happiest and most prosperous years of his life. Four of their eight children were born here. The house was built in a style common to the South at the time: squared logs covered with hand-hewn, whitewashed boards. The detached kitchen and law office were built of unfinished, squared logs. In 1859 Houston was elected governor but, although opposed to secession, he could not keep Texas from joining the Confederacy in 1861. Deposed from office, he returned to his second Huntsville home, called the "Steamboat House", where he died in 1863.

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Kittrell, Pleasant Williams

1858

Pleasant Williams Kittrell, author of the bill to establish the University of Texas, son of Bryant and Mary (Norman) Kittrell, was born at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, on April 13, 1805. At age thirteen he entered the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated at age seventeen. His great-grandfather, Judge John Williams, had helped establish the university. Kittrell then studied at the medical college of the University of Pennsylvania but left without a degree in 1824 and returned to North Carolina to practice medicine. He served later as a trustee of the university and was also twice elected to the state legislature. In 1837 he moved to Alabama, where he was elected to the state legislature three times, though he continued his practice of medicine. While he was serving in the Alabama legislature the University of Alabama conferred on him an honorary master of arts degree. In 1847 he was married to Mary Frances Goree, his second wife. He served also as trustee of the Judson Institute, a school for girls that his father-in-law, Dr. Langston Goree, had served as regent. In 1850 the Kittrells, along with the Goree family and their slaves, moved to Madison County, Texas. They later moved to Huntsville, where Kittrell's acquaintance with Sam Houston began. In Huntsville Kittrell continued his medical practice. He and Mrs. Kittrell had five children. Kittrell was twice elected to the Texas legislature. While serving as chairman of the Education Committee, he introduced and successfully fought for the bill to establish the University of Texas. The bill, signed by Governor E. M. Pease on February 11, 1858, appropriated every tenth acre of state land for the university and $200,000 in cash, a portion of the $10 million received by Texas for relinquishing claim to parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Wyoming. In 1866 Governor James W. Throckmorton appointed Kittrell chairman of the board of administrators of the still nonexistent university. After Houston died in 1863 Kittrell bought Houston's residence, the Steamboat House , and moved his family there. When the yellow fever epidemic struck Huntsville in 1867 he cared for fever patients until he too succumbed to the disease. He died at the Steamboat House, probably on September 29, 1867.

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Texas Prison Rodeo Arena - Huntsville

1931

From 1931 to 1986, the Texas Prison Rodeo drew up to 40,000 spectators every October to watch inmates ride bulls and broncs. It was one of the most popular sporting events in the state.

Ellis, Oscar Byron

1948

Oscar Byron Ellis, prison administrator, was born in Oneonta, Alabama, on August 27, 1902, the son of school superintendent John Wesley Ellis. He lived at Cleveland, Alabama, during his youth and graduated from Birmingham Southern College with a B.S. degree in chemistry in 1924, the year he married Gertrude Tidwell. After graduating, Ellis worked as manager of a Florsheim shoe store in Memphis, Tennessee, for a brief period and later taught science and coached football at a high school there. By 1928 he was business manager of the Memphis schools. He was elected a commissioner of Shelby County, Tennessee, in 1937 and served as commission secretary and commissioner of the Shelby County Penal Farm and of county roads and bridges. He attracted national attention for his supervision of prisoners and his efficient management of the demonstration farm, designed to promote better agricultural practices for farmers in the region. Ellis served in Texas as general manager of the prison system from January 1, 1948, until November 12, 1961. The Texas legislature enacted a law in 1957 that changed his title to director and the name of the state penal institution to Texas Department of Corrections. The Texas Prison Board recruited Ellis to reform an agency plagued by mismanagement, brutal disciplinary practices, harsh working conditions, poor living standards, and large numbers of escapes during World War II and afterward. From 1949 through 1961 Ellis, in cooperation with governors Beauford H. Jester, Allan Shivers, and Price Daniel, Sr. , persuaded the legislature to appropriate $19 million for capital improvements. Using those funds, as well as revenues derived from the sale of prison agricultural and industrial products, the "Ellis Plan" resulted in new building projects at the Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville and on the more than 73,000 acres of prison lands. During Ellis's administration the state constructed cell blocks to replace many of the prisoners' dormitories or "tanks" and built fences, picket towers, workshops, and other facilities at the eleven units of the prison system. Ellis reduced prison food and clothing purchases through reorganized agricultural and industrial methods that enabled prisoners to produce most of the food they consumed and most of the clothing they wore. Under the direction of Byron W. Frierson, assistant general manager for agriculture, the Ellis administration consolidated the various prison farms into a single unit, adopted modern drainage techniques for low-lying properties, placed thousands of acres in soil-conservation districts, improved the prison beef and dairy herds, and mechanized farming operations by replacing mules with tractors. With a labor force that increased from slightly fewer than 6,000 to nearly 12,000 prisoners between 1948 and 1961, Ellis held operating expenses well below the national average, as inmates performed agricultural, construction, and some industrial work. He expanded educational, recreational, and religious programs and revamped prisoner-classification procedures in order to segregate individuals according to such factors as age, offense, and rehabilitation potential. His administration saw a sharp decline in escapes. Ellis virtually ended the practice of self-mutilation among inmates by refusing to transfer prisoners from the farms to hospitals when they intentionally injured themselves to avoid labor. He raised living standards through his building program and placed televisions in dormitories as a means of enhancing morale. He fired many brutal and corrupt prison employees and persuaded the legislature to raise guards' salaries. He also worked with members of the press to win support for his administration and avoid unfavorable publicity. His monthly automobile travel to prison facilities often totaled as much as 4,600 miles; "you can't run the prison system from a desk," he observed. Austin MacCormick, perhaps the most renowned penal expert in the United State

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Houston, Joshua

1840

Joshua Houston, a servant of Sam Houston and an officeholder after the Civil War , was raised as a slave on Temple Lea's plantation in Marion, Perry County, Alabama. At his death in 1834 Lea left Joshua and his family to his daughter, Margaret Lea, who took them to Texas in 1840, when she married Sam Houston. During the Republic of Texas Joshua traveled with Houston and became a skilled blacksmith, wheelwright, and stage driver. He helped build the Houston home at Raven Hill. The Houstons taught him to read and write, though teaching slaves literacy skills was discouraged in Texas at the time. Joshua supervised the Houston household when the general was away and accompanied the family when the general went to Tennessee to see ailing former president Andrew Jackson. While living in the Governor's Mansion in Austin with the Houstons, Joshua met most of the prominent men in the state. Beginning in the 1850s Houston allowed Joshua to work for a stagecoach company and keep part of his earnings. In the fall of 1862 Houston freed his slaves, even though it was illegal to do so, and Joshua and most of the others asked to stay with the Houstons. After Houston's death in July 1863, Margaret Lea Houston moved to Independence, where she soon faced hard times, since her wealth was tied up in land and Confederate scrip. Joshua reportedly offered Mrs. Houston his life savings, $2,000 in gold, but she told him to use the money to educate his children. After the Civil War, Joshua Houston became a successful businessman, church leader, supporter of education, and officeholder. On January 15, 1866, he purchased land in Huntsville, where he opened a blacksmith shop and built a two-story house. In 1867 he was a trustee of the Union Church, the first Black church in Huntsville, which also served as a school. He was a deacon in the First Baptist Church, established in 1869. He was appointed a city alderman in 1867 and 1870 and was elected a county commissioner in 1878 and 1882. He promoted Bishop Ward College, founded in Huntsville in 1883. In 1888 he was a member of the Texas delegation to the Republican National Convention. Successively, Joshua Houston married women named Anneliza, Mary Green, and Sylvester Baker; he had eight children, many of whom had distinguished careers. He died on January 8, 1902, and was buried beside his wife, Sylvester, in Oakwood Cemetery, Huntsville, only a few yards from the grave of Sam Houston.

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Things to Do in Huntsville

spooky 4.0 mi away
Demon's Road & Martha Chapel Cemetery

Texas's most haunted road. An 1830s cemetery on Bowden Road near Huntsville where cars rock on their own and handprints appear on windows.
quirky 0.9 mi away
Cowboy Boot House

A 35-foot-tall house shaped like a cowboy boot built from salvaged materials by artist Dan Phillips and completed in 2017. He added a matching…
day trip
Day Trip to Huntsville 🤿 (FULL EPISODE) S3 E2

Featured on The Daytripper — a full-episode local travel guide.

Everything Near Huntsville

295 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the nearest 200 are listed here — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Huntsville on the Map
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