Behind bars in Weston County, Part V

The tales of Newcastle’s earliest jails and their inhabitants
 
By Bri Brasher 
with Leonard Cash
NLJ Reporter 
 
In this week’s installment of the History on Main series, local historian Leonard Cash helps the News Letter Journal start to wrap up the story of Newcastle’s county jails. The story continues with the first talk of a remodel to City Hall in order to accommodate the Weston County Sheriff’s Department, as the county’s second jail — built in the early 1930s — was quickly becoming uninhabitable. 
As part of his research, Cash visited with his old friend and former Weston County sheriff, Don Howell. Howell and his wife, Carolyn, who worked in many capacities in the sheriff’s office, helped to fill in a few gaps missing from Cash’s records of the time. Howell told Cash that between moving out of the second county jail in the early 1970s and moving into the new joint law enforcement center in the early 1980s, the sheriff’s office took up quarters at Newcastle City Hall. The Weston County Sheriff’s Department rented two cells and an open room to house the rest of the office, according to Howell. Carolyn Howell told Cash that it was quite a mess when City Hall housed the fire department, city and county law enforcement, and other city offices. 
Howell shared other interesting tidbits with Cash. The Howell family’s involvement with local law enforcement dates back to the 1920s when his grandfather also served as sheriff. Howell told Cash
the story of when his grandfather knew that one of his prisoners was chipping away at the rock wall to make an escape, so he stood outside of the jail watching to catch him in the act. 
Cash chuckled at the story.
“Sounds like ‘ole Howell let him (the prisoner) do all the work and then put him back in,” Cash said.
The News Letter Journal then started to report on a merging of the Sheriff’s Department to City Hall in the spring of 1977 when the city of Newcastle called for bids to remodel the Newcastle Police Department facilities in City Hall. The paper reported that “Mayor Ralph Updike said the remodeling will provide an office for Weston County Sheriff Lewis Johnson, an interrogation room and changes in the visitation room. The single car garage in the building will be used for some of these facilities.” It was also reported that financing was to come from a Law Enforcement Assistance Administration federal grant to provide 90 percent of the necessary funds, while the  other 10 percent was to come from the city budget.
Next, the News Letter Journal reported on Aug. 25, 1977, that the City Council would contribute $40,000 from general funds for new facilities planned for a joint law enforcement facility. This project was separate from the City Hall remodel, according to Cash. The article said the city
did not receive public works funds for the project, but the county received $485,000 worth of grant money. To accommodate limited funds, the originally planned facility needed to be reduced in size. At this time, the building was to be constructed and connected to the back of the Weston County Courthouse, and the old jail building was to be torn down. Cash said upgrades to the courthouse were also in the plans.
A cutline under a photo of the old jail published in the News Letter Journal on Nov. 24, 1977, validated that the sheriff’s residence and jail facilities were no longer in use and were to be torn down in the near future for a new law enforcement complex to be built. The article, “Bids Called For Law Enforcement Complex and Remodeling,” also mentioned that the county received two grants from the Economic Development Administration – $162,000 for courthouse alterations and $485,000 for the law enforcement building. The article indicated that construction on the project was expected to start in the near future.
A Dec. 22, 1977, article then reported that the lone bid from Fred C. Hanson Construction Co., of Thermopolis, was more than $300,000 over the engineer’s estimate of cost. The commissioners rejected the original bid and called for another set of bids on the law enforcement complex in February 1978; they received an extension on the grants until March 10. The News Letter Journal reported on March 9, 1978, that the commissioners again rejected bids for the proposed law enforcement center and courthouse alterations. Another extension request was submitted to the Economic Development Administration on their two grants. The article said the plans for the project would be redesigned if the extension was granted. On March 15, 1978, it was reported that the EDA allowed the extension. 
Reports on the planning continued in the March 23, 1978, News Letter Journal. An article explained that the commissioners were in the process of meeting with architectural engineers, working rapidly to meet the new EDA extension deadline of June 10. Efforts must have failed because the newspaper reported that “County Projects Appear ‘Dead’ on May 4, 1978. After negotiations with two different contractors and no luck, the project hit a dead end, according to the article, which reported that “the EDA deadline for starting the project is May 10, so the grant is expected to be terminated on that date.”
“So I did some snoopin’! I figured out why we were having so much trouble following the remodels and all that,” Cash said. “I called my old buddy Walter Soper, and he told me all of this. He was really involved in Newcastle.”
According to Cash, Soper said that if the money was not used by Weston County, then the funds were to go to the state of Georgia, which was second in line for the money. Soper also told Cash that the bids ended up being more than the grant money, so the county used the grant money for other things.
On June 29, 1978, News Letter Journal reports appear to back up Soper. The commissioners applied for a $647,000 grant from the EDA for projects that included a city-county fire facility, a new building at the fairgrounds, and a new building at the airport. 
According to the News Letter Journal, the EDA said the original grant money was still available for the county if the commissioners could come up with projects to utilize the funds. The commissioners then opened bids on the new multipurpose building at the fairgrounds in the fall of 1978. Soper said the other two projects were also underway around the same time.