Baxter County Courthouse

The Baxter County Courthouse is a courthouse in Mountain Home, Arkansas, United States, the county seat of Baxter County, built in 1941. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. The building replaced another courthouse on the same site which was deemed unsafe in 1939.HistoryBaxter County was established on March 24, 1873 by the Arkansas General Assembly from parts of four neighboring counties. The county seat was established at Mountain Home, which was a community atop a plateau between the North Fork River and White River. County government initially inhabited the Jacob Wolf House in Norfork. Today, the structure is the oldest standing county courthouse in Arkansas, built in 1811.Building the courthouseCounty Judge R. M. Ruthven declared the county courthouse to be unsafe and too small for county needs in 1939. Ruthven was instrumental in the construction of the Cotter Bridge in Baxter County which opened the area to commerce in 1928. The courthouse was expanded from two to three stories as a method to keep the county seat in Mountain Home in response to a 1912 state law which kept county seats from moving out of three story buildings. Ruthven acquired the services of T. Ewing Shelton, an architect from Fayetteville, Arkansas to draft plans for a new courthouse. The plans were received and approved by voters, despite protests by Gassville and Cotter residents who wanted the county seat relocated to their cities with greater populations.