The Houston Jail, built around 1868 from hand-hewn hardwood logs, is the only surviving log jail in north Alabama and the only surviving building from the period when Houston served as the county seat of Winston County. It replaced an earlier jail destroyed by pro-Union men in the county during the Civil War. Its interior logs were covered with boards more than two inches thick and 12 to 14 inches wide, cut from native timber at the nearby water-powered Partridge Mill on the Sipsey River and secured with horseshoe nails made by a local blacksmith to discourage prisoners from sawing through the timbers. The jail had two rooms, and sanitary facilities consisted of small holes in the back wall. Houston had first been the county seat of Hancock County, created on February 12, 1850, with the seat originally located on the other side of Brushy Creek about three miles northeast of this site. On January 22, 1858, the county seat and courthouse moved to this location, and the county was renamed Winston in honor of Alabama Governor John Anthony Winston. After Cullman County was created in 1877 and took the eastern third of Winston County, Houston remained the county seat for a little more than 25 years until the citizens moved it to Double Springs in 1884. Once home to a two-story log courthouse, jail, and several buildings for doctors, lawyers, blacksmiths, a county newspaper, and mercantile businesses, Houston later became a ghost town. After the county seat moved, the jail was abandoned, then used as a private residence as late as the 1960s. In 1975, Marshall Alford donated it to the people of Winston County, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Houston Historical Society began restoration efforts in March 2006.