On a very quiet Sunday evening as I was racing the sunset into Howard, the Elk County Courthouse sat there locked up and still. It is a handsome early twentieth-century Classical Revival building, completed in 1908 and designed with the kind of brick, stone, and columned symmetry that small Kansas counties favored when they wanted to project stability and civic pride. Elk County itself was formed in 1875 and named for the Elk River and while the courthouse hasn't produced any headline-making trials, it has quietly handled the everyday legal life of the county for more than a century. Even though the building was locked, I was free to walk the grounds and put my nose against the glass to catch a glimpse of the interior woodwork and stairways that hint at its age. [Review 717 of 2026 - 68 in Kansas - 25898 overall] read more

See all