Historic honky tonk scoots to new location

Boots will scoot again, as a legendary Houston dance hall moves to the new site of the Harris County Fair and Rodeo.

Tin Hall, a honky-tonk originating in the late 1800s, will have a new home on a 165-acre parcel at 19835 Telge Road in the Cypress-Tomball area, the Houston Chronicle reported. The fair and rodeo will be at the same property, which Tin Hall owner Fred Stockton owns.

Tommy LeBlanc and John-Michael Kamel of Avison Young represented the buyer, Stockton Foundation, and Wyatt Williams represented the seller, Williams Family Tomball Land. 

The announcement comes eight years after the venue closed, as traditional honky tonks struggled to stay open in sprawling Houston. Stockton wants to maintain elements from the original 1,500-square-foot structure and incorporate a revamped version into a larger building to host events, parties and eventually weddings. 

“It will be a brand-new building but with the old flooring and the old walls. The old building was built in the 1880s originally, and it was in really bad shape,” Stockton told the outlet.

The original site of the Harris County Fair and Rodeo, located in west Houston’s Addicks Reservoir, was destroyed by Hurricane Harvey. The organization previously running the event disbanded as a result, and a nonprofit took over, working to revive the event over the past three years. Although Stockton’s firm owns the parcel, it will donate some of the land to the nonprofit for fair and rodeo activities. 

Tin Hall has hosted performances from musical legends such as Willine Nelson, Merle Haggard and Percy Sledge. It has been owned by the Stockton family for generations, although it was briefly owned by Mark Martinez before reverting back to Stockton upon the dissolution of venue operations back in 2015, the outlet said.

—Quinn Donoghue