County Seat – Tilden
Built – 1930
Style – Classical Revival
Architect – W. C. Stephenson
Photos taken – May 9th, 2004
see McMullen County Courthouse – revisited
see Historic Dog Town Jail
see Tilden Town Square
Seemingly, just a small, dusty South Texas town. Since we visited in 2004, there’s been an oil boom south of San Antonio. Whether that has changed this sleepy little town or not remains to be seen. My guess is that it’s changed Tilden very little, but probably put a few dollars in some of the local ranchers’ pockets.
From my travel journal. We were taking a Sunday drive south of San Antonio, and the flowers (cactus) were spectacular. “Once we got to Tilden, it was hard to miss the courthouse. This town is small! In fact, according to the map we were using, the population is 500. I am not sure where they live though. The courthouse was very unimpressive. But then, this is a small town, in a sparsely populated county that is most likely one of the poorer counties in Texas. The courthouse had little style. It did have a few white columns by each door and it had rounded gables – neither of which added much to the plain yellow brick structure. It did have an interesting rock fence. The fence looked like something you might see around an older ranch house. This probably reflects the fact that this is ranch country with plenty of rock to use for building.
We also located on the same square, the old jailhouse. This was probably more interesting. It was made of the ubiquitous rock and quite small (maybe two rooms). There was also an old café among the few buildings around the square. Like the café, most of the buildings looked unoccupied.”