The Western District Courthouse

The Western District Courthouse. . Eureka Springs was incorporated on Valentine's Day in 1880. At that time, the only courthouse was in the county seat of Berryville, some 12 miles to the east. This was a great distance at the time, the roads were bad, and the King's River had to be forded if it was passable. As a result, the citizens of Eureka Springs petitioned for their own courthouse, and in 1883, the Arkansas General Assembly enacted legislation to create the Western Judicial District of Carroll County. In 1906 Claude A. Fuller was elected mayor of Eureka Springs. A rented room was being used as a courthouse and the town wanted a new one. The problem was to get the Quorum Court, composed of all the Justices of the Peace in the county, to approve an appropriation for the purpose of building the courthouse. The night before the matter of the appropriation was to come before the Court, Mayor Fuller discovered that two Justices of the Peace from the Western District of the county were absent, and he needed their votes. He telephoned the Chief of Police in Eureka Springs and instructed him to go out on horseback, leading two horses for the justices to use, and bring the absent ones in. The following morning at 5:00, the Chief of Police and the two reluctant justices rode into Berryville. When the Court met and the matter was put to vote, those two justices made it a tie. Tom Fancher, the County Judge broke the tie by voting for the appropriation, and that is how Eureka Springs obtained its courthouse. It was designed and constructed of native limestone by W.O. Perkins and Son in 1908.