The big house, the bucket, the calaboose, the cooler, the gray bar hotel, the hoosegow, the joint, the jug, the pen, the pokey, the slammer, and stoney lonesome.

These are all slang for jail.

On my way down the coast, I did a Friday afterwork jail sketch in the town of Half Moon Bay.

On a side street that parallels Main is a small building that sits alone. In case anyone wondered what this building was, it reads “JAIL BUILT-1909” in big black letters across the top. (The jail was actually built in 1919.)

This was Half Moon Bay’s small two-cell jail. This isn’t, even with the wildest imagination, the Big House.

The jail is built of reinforced concrete on a concrete foundation, built to keep people in. Not like it’s formerly interned were serious criminals. The cost of the jail was $3,000.

The jail held prisoners until they could be transferred to the county jail in Redwood City. Locals also spent the night here having had too much fun in Half Moon Bay’s saloons.

The jail was used as a jail and sheriff’s office until 1967 where it was little used until it was reopened as a historical museum in 2018. It is the oldest public building in Half Moon Bay.

I then headed 45 minutes south on Highway One to the small town of Davenport to sketch their small jail.

This two-cell jail was built in 1914 of Santa Cruz Portland Cement, made at the Davenport Cement Plant. This small jail was built to last and looks solid for a building that is over 100 years old.

The jail housed two horse thieves from San Mateo and like Half Moon Bay, locals that had imbibed a bit too much in Davenports’s saloon.

In 1936, when the new jail on Front Street in Santa Cruz was built, the Davenport clink became redundant.

It is now a historical and art museum.