Built in 1906 with native stone, the Prospect Heights jail was the town's only municipal building and was constructed to incarcerate disorderly people who frequented the area's many saloons. After a 1901 law suspended all liquor licenses in Cañon City, Prospect Heights was incorporated on May 10, 1905, by brothers Florijan, Anton, Frank, and John Adamic and 36 others so residents could allow the sale and consumption of alcohol. Soon afterward, railcars loaded with beer, wine, and whiskey arrived on tracks bordering the town, and Anton Adamic sold the liquor to locally grown saloons that sprang up quickly. Mill workers from the nearby US Smelter Company and coal miners from the Nonac, Royal Gorge, and Wolf Park Mines flocked there because they could not get a drink in Cañon City, and as the saloons flourished, so did crime and drunken debauchery. The town quickly elected a sheriff to keep the peace but had no jail, so Ernie Sell and his father were hired to build one; Ernie Sell then celebrated its completion and became its first occupant. Its most famous inmate was film cowboy star Tom Mix, who was arrested after shooting his guns in the middle of the street, and when he failed to appear on a production set the next morning, his producer bailed him out so filming could continue. When the US Smelter closed in 1909, the saloons' lucrative business evaporated, and the last saloons closed in September 1909 after the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a decision supporting community bans on alcohol sales. The jail last held prisoners during the coal strikes that led to the Colorado Coalfield War of 1914, and Prospect Heights dissolved in 1990 because of a failing water system.