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C. A. Holliday Transfer Facility

Prison in Texas, United States

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ5006247
Source-derived summary

The Holliday Transfer Facility (TDCJ Identification Code: NF, also referred to as the Holliday Transfer Unit), is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice transfer facility for men located in Huntsville, Texas. Holliday is along Interstate 45 and .5 miles (0.80 km) north of Texas State Highway 30. The unit, on a 1,412-acre (571 ha) plot of land, is co-located with the Wynne Unit.

Holliday, one of the largest transfer facilities in Texas, is across the street from the Texas Prison Museum. Holliday is one of two prisons in the TDCJ that, as of 2003, is named after an African-American.

History

Richard Watkins, a senior African-American prison warden, led an effort to have a prison named for C. A. Holliday, an African-American community activist and pastor in the Huntsville area. Watkins sent many letters to Governor of Texas Ann Richards, asking her to name a prison after Holliday. The $30 million Holliday Unit, with a capacity of around 2,000 beds, opened in January 1994. Cigarette smoking at Holliday was forbidden since the facility's opening, while a TDCJ-wide smoking ban, stemming from a November 18, 1994 Texas Board of Criminal Justice unanimous decision to forbid smoking at all TDCJ facilities, began on March 1, 1995.

Facility

Holliday, an industrial-scale complex, has sheet metal siding and low sloping roofs.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “C. A. Holliday Transfer Facility” as prison in Texas, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Holliday, Transfer and Facility.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2003, 1994, 1995—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Holliday, Transfer and Facility providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “C. A. Holliday Transfer Facility”, the useful work is to connect “prison in Texas, United States” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5006247. The first chronological checks are 2003, 1994 and 1995.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  • Subject orientation
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  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “C. A. Holliday Transfer Facility”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow C. A. Holliday Transfer Facility primary sources, C. A. Holliday Transfer Facility archive and Holliday research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from C. A. Holliday Transfer Facility” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.