Uinta County Courthouse, Evanston Wyoming
When my grandmother, Arline Kinsel Paulen and Albert F. Edwards arrived at the Unita County Courthouse in Evanston, Wyoming to be married 11 August 1917, the Courthouse was already established as the oldest county courthouse in the state.
The building probably looked in 1917, much as it looks today, but its exterior architecture had evolved through at least three expansions. The earliest building was the 1873 jail, a brick structure erected in the center of the town square by order of Governor John A. Cambell, first Territorial Governor of Wyoming. Uinta County was the first new county estabished by the First Wyoming Territorial Legislature, and this first jail and courthouse was authorized to be built an an expense not to exceed $25,000. The jail was to be built first, followed by the courthouse in 1874. It wasn’t long before both jail and courthouse outgrew their spaces, and in 1887 a new jail was completed and the former jail converted into courthouse offices.
The growing Evanston community demanded a still larger courthouse, and in 1910 a two-story addition was contructed at the front of the existing courthouse building. According to the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office, “It changed the scale and character of the courthouse from that of a relatively simple, territorial building to a more pretentious, more national building. The addition is essentially Georgian Revival style.”
This is the building that Arline and Albert would have entered in 1917.
Sources:
Wyoming State Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources. “Uinta County Courthouse.” Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office. [article online]. Accessed 17 February 2010. Available from http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/NationalRegister/Site.asp?id=471.
Simpson, Tricia. “Uinta County Courthouse Evanston Wyoming”. 2009. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. Photograph.
THE BUILDING LOOKS EXCELLENT AND IS IN GREAT SHAPE