The Chase County Courthouse

Location:  Downtown Cottonwood Falls.

Contact:  Phone:   800/431-6344

Admission Fee:  Donations Appreciated

Photos Copyright H. Schuster.  Please do not use without permission.

Rising impressively into the blue Kansas sky, in the heart of the Flint Hills, the Chase County courthouse has served its purpose for over a century.  In fact, it holds the distinction of being the oldest functioning courthouse in Kansas, and is listed on the National Historic Register.   The building, completed in 1873, has certainly stood the test of time.  It is constructed of native limestone, all quarried within ten miles of the structure.  The sediments of some ancient ocean, turned to limestone over the eons, then uncovered, cut and placed here by skilled stone craftsmen.  The fruits of their labors we still behold today.

The distinctive and ornate clock tower (Photo, right) has been the victim of more than one lightning strike.

Just inside the front door lies an engineering marvel of its day--and ours.  A graceful three-story walnut stair case seemingly defies gravity as it spirals upward with no center support.  How this was done is one of many mysteries its builders took with them to the grave.  My feeble attempts at photographing the amazing stairs don't do them justice.  They simply jut out gracefully from the wall and end in mid-air!  The whole building is so unique it's almost like some ancient and mysterious artifact left to us by some long forgotten lost civilization.  A similar, but much smaller stair case in the rear of the courthouse is just as astounding.

At the top of the spiral stairs, an oval window on the third floor overlooks the town of Cottonwood Falls, and the Flint Hills beyond.

Interesting in its own rite, the old jail at the rear of the courthouse certainly gives meaning to the phrase "spending time in the can".  Though no longer functioning as a jail, prisoners occupied the two cells located within the metal enclosure until the 1970's.

Some of the inmates "marked the days" on the bars of their metal cells.  Apparently, the anonymous author of these marks (Photo, right) served a thirty-day sentence in the Chase County jail.

Other inmates signed their names on various objects in the jail cells (Small photo, below).

Yet another mystery awaits visitors in the front lawn of the courthouse.  What appears to be a simple artillery piece at first glance, is not so simple.  Upon closer inspection (large photo, right) you will discover Japanese writing near the breach of the weapon.  No one alive today seems to know how this canon from half-way around the world ended up in front of a courthouse in the Kansas Flint Hills.  What is known is that an earlier canon which originally sat in front of the courthouse was turned in during the scrap iron drives of W.W.II.  Incredible as it may seem today, this was not an isolated incident.  Historic artillery pieces all over the US were lost from cemeteries and public parks to the scrap iron drives during that war.  At any rate, one day in the late 1940's the present canon was unloaded off a truck and placed in it's present position guarding the courthouse.  The identity of those responsible for procuring the field piece and the story of just how it got here have been lost to history.  The mysterious artillery piece, which in its original duty may well have hurled shells towards Chase County boys during wartime, today guards the north approach to the Chase County courthouse.

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