MOULTRIE, Ga. — The walls came tumbling down this week at the 65-year-old former Colquitt County Correctional Institution building.

All that remained Tuesday was rubble and twisted metal from the facility that was in use for nearly 60 years before county inmates were moved to a former state correctional facility at Spence Field.

The materials will not be wasted as the metal will be sold as scrap and the concrete used for road projects.

For Warden Billy Howell, who worked at the old prison in the 1970s before returning later as warden, it was a bittersweet moment.

“I rode up there and took a few pictures for myself,” he said. “That building served its purpose. But it was time for it to come down.”

During Howell’s first stint there one person was posted at the back door for the night with a screen door and a fan to keep cool. The other door was at the front and accessed the administrative offices, part of the original structure built in 1953.

“They used to watch inmates with one night watchman,” Howell said. “He had a rotary phone in case something went wrong.”

The  new facility, a former Georgia Department of Corrections probation facility, serves the purpose much better. One person in a control room can monitor the roughly 65 cameras that cover even the four inmate housing areas.

“This building is a lot more energy efficient,” Howell said. “We spent a lot of money trying to maintain [the old prison]. It was just a nightmare the way it was laid out.”

Assistant Warden Gene Williams salvaged the brass plaque from the building before it was hauled away for scrap, and some other mementos that came from the old prison will be turned over to the Museum of Colquitt County History, Howell said.

The late Leland Dampier, who preceded Howell as warden, started a scrapbook that has preserved some of the history.

The state’s closing of the Spence Field detention center coincided neatly with the county’s needs. Building a new prison would have cost an estimated $6.5 million.

Instead, the county was able to lease a modern 220-bed facility for $25,000 a year over a 20-year period, with Colquitt County Commission approving that deal in 2010. After spending about $260,000 on renovations the county moved inmates into the new location.

Nearly all inmates housed there are state inmates, for which the Department of Corrections pays the county $20 per inmate per day. The county has the benefit of about 100 inmates’ labor per day. Officials estimated would cost up to $2 million more a year to the county budget if it had to hire workers to perform the work done by prisoners.

The county has no immediate plans for building in the area where the old prison stood, Colquitt County Administrator Chas Cannon said.

Currently the Roads & Bridges Department is located in the old warden’s residence, and solid waste and purchasing are in separate buildings nearby. Several proposals were mentioned to re-purpose the newer part at the old prison but nothing panned out.

“It was costing us insurance premiums,” Cannon said. “It’s been unoccupied for years.”

Looking down at the area, located behind Colquitt County Jail, on Google Maps shows a “jigsaw” of buildings, Cannon said.

“We would like at some point to get a master plan,” he said. “We could have a consolidated building.”