Court jewels: Buildings are symbols of local government and civic pride

LOGAN — County courthouses are repositories of many records, but the buildings themselves are also a record of pride, values and determination. Consider the Cache County Courthouse, which has recently come full circle.

The first courthouse in Cache Country was a small wooden building constructed in 1868 that served as both office and jail. Logan had been designated as the seat of the newly created Cache County in 1857, and at first, county officers had met in the Old Tithing Office until — at a cost of $1,841 — the frame building was built.

By the early 1880s, even though Utah was still only a territory, county needs had grown to the point that a new building was needed.

It so happened at that time that the Logan Temple was under construction, but work had temporarily come to a stop because of a shortage of funds. So county officials asked Truman O. Angell Jr., who had designed the temple, to come up with a plan for a courthouse.

The work on the courthouse was begun by the then-idle temple construction crew, the Logan Second Ward United Order Building and Manufacturing Company. Lumber came from the Temple Sawmill in Logan Canyon. Rock for the footings and foundation came from the Temple Quarry at the mouth of Green Canyon. The beautifully carved sandstone lintels and sills came from a quarry the temple crew had established east of Hyde Park; buff-colored bricks came from Smithfield, but at the building's completion were stained "Nauvoo Red."

When the courthouse was finished in 1883, a local newspaper called it a "fine and imposing structure" and one "of which our county may well be proud."

County needs continued to grow, and in the 1890s, a western addition was added, done in now-available red brick. In 1917, a three-story, 17-foot-square section was added on both sides of the Main Street entrance.

By the mid-1950s, the red-brick exterior had become discolored, and the building was painted white and the foundation gray.

"They created a white-gray mass that obscured the features that made this an architectural masterpiece of the late 19th century," says Newel Daines, a physician and former mayor of Logan.

Changes continued inside, with ceilings raised and lowered, walls added, offices divided, air-conditioning units stuck in windows, until it was what one writer called a "labyrinthine, inaccessible nightmare." By the time the new millennium rolled around, roofs leaked, sewers backed up, and electrical problems occurred. There were some who thought the building had outlived its usefulness and should be torn down.