History
The building, completed in 1886, was the second courthouse in the county. The first courthouse in the county, a 20-by-24 foot one-story stone building, was built in 1857. It served as the location for the trial of 392 Dakota Indians after the Sioux Uprising. Thirty-eight Dakota were simultaneously hanged in December 1862.
By the late 1800s, the county commissioners felt that the previous buildings were a "disgrace and gave strangers that we were behind the times. That the county was either poverty stricken or greatly lacking in enterprise." The new building combined a Second Empire roof and dome with Italianate features. The stone was provided by a local quarry, with various techniques giving it both rusticated and ashlar surfaces. The copper-sheathed dome is capped with a statue of Lady Justice.
Read more about this topic: Blue Earth County Courthouse
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“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)