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canute jail, oklahoma calabooses, oklahoma tiny jails

Canute Jail

City/Town:
Location Class:
Built: | Abandoned:
Status: Restored
Photojournalist: Cathy Brock

The Canute Jail sits alone in the disappearing town being consumed by vines. It is one of the prime examples of a calaboose in Oklahoma, a remnant of pioneer days passed. Its stories are hidden away, yet to be uncovered. It is endangered of being returned to the earth and its history gone forever.

According to a sign that sits in front of the building a resident detailed an oral history of it. It says,

“Granny told me about the only man ever detained in the Canute Jail and remembers the day he was arrested in 1926. Her family lived across the street from the accused man and his wife and told me how he murdered his father-in-law Christmas morning.

The husband was a brooding, jealous man who had a rage that always simmered beneath the surface of his face. He did not allow his wife to leave the house while he was away, nor did he allow her to have visitors. Furthermore, very little grass grew in their yard, and upon returning home the husband would promptly check the dirt outside the house for footprints. If he found any he would beat his wife for disobeying him.

The couple had an infant and Granny told me that she and the other neighborhood children would stand on a tiny patch of grass that grew under one of the couple’s windows so they could see the baby inside. “The wife would open the window and let us see the baby through the screen,” Granny told me. “All of us little kids in the neighborhood wanted to see that baby, naturally.” But she never came outta the house.”

Then one day the man’s jealous fury erupted in a violent outburst. In a tragic maneuver of disobedience, the young wife had written to her father to come take her home for a Christmas visit. The woman’s father and brother arrived Christmas morning and were speaking to her out in the front of the house. “That’s when her husband came out and shot her daddy and killed him right there in the middle of the street. You could see bullet holes in the house for years and years.”

Granny said her father witnessed the whole event. “Dad was sittin’ in the window shelling peanuts, she recalled. “I think Mamma was going to make some candy or something because he had peanut shells all over the living room. Boy, we jumped up when all this shooting started. That was pretty exciting!” she said.

The sheriff arrested the accused man and put him in the Canute jail until he could be taken down to the county seat for the trial. Eventually, the Canute Jail and others like it were shut down. As Granny said “they’d put them in there and there was no bathroom, no running water, no nothing. So it was just left closed.” Despite my great-grandfather’s testimony of having witnessed the murder, the jury acquitted the man and he took his wife and moved to Kentucky.

When Granny reflected on the rest of the events of that Christmas she said that her folks brought the young wife over to their house and she remembered the woman’s sorrow. Granny paused a moment then quietly added “But we got to see that baby all over the place that day.”

Check out over 150 tiny jails across Oklahoma and the rest of the country by checking out our Abandoned Atlas Travel Map.




Bibliography
Canute Jail
Emily Cowan

Emily is a two-time published author of "Abandoned Oklahoma: Vanishing History of the Sooner State" and "Abandoned Topeka: Psychiatric Capital of the World". With over two hundred published articles on our websites. Exploring since 2018 every aspect of this has become a passion for her. From educating, fighting to preserve, writing, and learning about history there is nothing she would rather do.

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Emily Cowan

Emily is a two-time published author of "Abandoned Oklahoma: Vanishing History of the Sooner State" and "Abandoned Topeka: Psychiatric Capital of the World". With over two hundred published articles on our websites. Exploring since 2018 every aspect of this has become a passion for her. From educating, fighting to preserve, writing, and learning about history there is nothing she would rather do.

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