AnimusProcella

The referenced "Snake Farm" is along the I-35 freeway between New Braunfels, Texas and San Marcos, Texas (Go Bobcats!). As other sources note it began operations around 1967. Basically it was from the late sixties through the eighties a snake and reptile house, with a few other oddities mixed in. Today (2016) the Snake Farm is under new management and is a small but nice family oriented private zoo, so please stop in if you are ever passing by. Now the following comes from my experience as a child in the early seventies. On about two or three occasions, I happened to visit with my family, or once with a summer camp, the Snake Farm. At the time it was a dingy privately run reptile house, with some large snakes, a few other reptiles (maybe a gator, but I am fuzzy on that point). If you went out back of the main building at the time to see the larger animals exhibited there, you would notice a number of ramshackle mobile homes lining the back of the property. Never saw any activity, but it was odd. In my college years, I attended SWT in San Marcos. Both the Snake Farm and SWT reside in Hays County, Texas. It was then that I first heard rumors of the Snake Farm's other purpose. The farm part was a front for a prostitution operation run out of the trailers at the back of the Snake Farm property. The activity was supposedly sanctioned by the sheriffs(s) of Hays County, who I imagine got a cut of the action (or so I am told). Often, women of "ill repute" and questionable morals were taken there by the sheriff of Hays County to work off the debt they owed to the court/county. While I never knew anyone to utilize the clandestine facilities of the "Snake Farm", long-time residents of the county relayed much of what I know to me about the "Snake Farm" history. Take what I relay for what it is, second and third hand rumor or legend. You decide.