History
Note: This article concerns the history of the Courthouse. Another article discusses the Haunted Courthouse.
The Arizona Territorial government selected Tombstone to be the county seat for the newly created Cochise County in 1881. A new courthouse was built out of wood. However, the 1881 fire destroyed that building, so the supervisors temporarily located the courthouse on the ground floor of the Mining Exchange Building on Freemont Street while a new courthouse was being built. Today that location is a parking lot across from Schieffelin Hall.
The supervisors then had a brick kiln built on the corner of Third and Toughnut and brought in Chinese brick makers and bricklayers to build the courthouse that is still standing on that corner. The cornerstone was laid on August 11, 1882, and the entire building was finished in 1883 at the cost of about $50,000. It is a two-story Victorian-style building in the shape of a cross and once held all the county offices and a beautiful courtroom.
Cochise County offices were moved from Tombstone to Bisbee in 1930, so this building was left vacant. In 1948 a company began to turn the building into a hotel, but they ran out of money and stopped that project after gutting it. In 1952 the Tombstone Restoration Commission began restoring the building, and in 1960 the Arizona State Parks Board accepted the building and turned it into the first operational state park in Arizona. Today, the courthouse is the smallest state park in Arizona and contains a professionally curated museum of artifacts from the early days of Tombstone. As an interesting aside, the Schieffelin Monument, about three miles northwest of the city, is also part of this state park.
Photos
The following gallery includes six photos from the courthouse.
