AASHTO Journal - TxDOT Helps Highlight ‘Throne’ From the Past

Texas is full of unique and historic sites, but one stop in Rusk County is a literal “throne” from the past – a unique outhouse that has survived for decades and thus rated its very own historical marker; installed courtesy of the Texas Department of Transportation.

[Above photo via TxDOT]

TxDOT works with the Texas Historical Commission to properly install historical markers. While the commission received many “unusual” applications for historical designations, the request filed for “The Arnold Outhouse” proved most atypical.

“It’s fancy, and very elaborate for that time period,” explained Vickie Armstrong, director of the Rusk County Depot Museum – located in Henderson, TX – in a TxDOT blog post. “John Arnold built it to match his home. He was a prominent lawyer and businessman here in Rusk County.”

And it is fancy indeed, featuring louvred windows (for ventilation, of course) as well as a glass-paned window in the back.

While the world moved to indoor plumbing, and outhouse use went down the drain, this fancy outhouse endured – proof that not everything gets flushed away by time, Armstrong noted. “Outhouses have more or less disappeared now,” she said. “They are a disappearing piece of history. Which, here at the museum, is why we try and keep history alive. That is what we have done with the outhouse.”

Interestingly, while John Arnold’s home was torn down to make way for a new library, a concerted effort saved the outhouse – relocating it 200 feet from where it was originally built and installing it on the library’s grounds.

“At first, when we wanted to apply for the marker, there were some giggles and laughs. Virginia Knapp, who was the chairman of the historical commission then, she’s the one who got the ball rolling,” Armstrong said. “After the marker was installed, the news media, newspapers, everything, came around to see and write about the outhouse.”

Yet preservation of this lavish outhouse – which has become a definitive part of Henderson’s unique charm – helped preserve a “unique treasure” to allow residents and visitors alike to remember how everyday life once looked in East Texas.

This is one of several unusual preservation efforts undertaken by TxDOT.

For example, six years ago, TxDOT helped preserved a grove of “clones” of the famous “Treaty Oak” in Austin, TX.

Located in Treaty Oak Park in Austin’s West Line Historic District, the roughly 500-year-old “Treaty Oak” is the last living member of the Council Oaks; a grove of 14 trees that served as a sacred meeting place for Comanche and Tonkawa tribes.

And, earlier this year during an environmental review for the Loop 88 highway project outside Lubbock, TX, TxDOT planners uncovered the bones of large, prehistoric animals called “megafauna” and called in the agency’s archeologists to help preserve them as well as search for signs of prehistoric human activity at the site.