Old Flippin Jail

by David Wagner

Title

Old Flippin Jail

Artist

David Wagner

Medium

Mixed Media - Illustration

Description

This tiny jail, measuring a mere 12 × 9 feet, was constructed mainly to deal with the problem of vagrancy caused by men who had arrived on the nearby railroad and were searching for work or food and who sometimes were arrested for public drunkenness or fighting. The jail’s concrete walls and curved roof (to shed rainwater) were formed with wooden-plank molds. Bulges in the facade show where the boards did not quite meet. What appears to be a chimney is actually a vent for the “indoor outhouse.” When the jail became obsolete in the early 1960s after the introduction of revised facility codes, prisoners were sent to the Marion County Jail in Yellville. The building survived because it was too hard to tear down, and now it is preserved as a legacy of Flippin’s history.

Uploaded

March 17th, 2023

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