Kanabec County Courthouse - Mora, Minnesota - Wikipedia Entries on Waymarking.com

Kanabec County was organized in 1859 and it was 17 years before they had their first courthouse. In the early years there was little need for a courthouse, the population of the county as last as 1870 was 53. By 1876 homesteaders started settling in the southern parts of the county and the need for a county building was realized and a one room county office building, 16x30 feet in size was erected at Millet Rapids.

In the general election of 1882 it was decided to move the county seat to the new community of Mora. Temporarily the county rented office space in Mora. In 1883 a wood courthouse and jail opened in Mora. Unfortunately 11 years later in March 1893 burned.

The citizens were anxious to build a brick fire proof courthouse. About a month later the architectural firm Buechner and Jacobson of St. Paul. The plan called for a building outside the $8,000 the county had on hand and the county commissioners did not want the county to borrow money during hard economic times and requested the architect to modify the plans to lower the cost. Charles Skoglund was award the bid to build the new designed building with a bid of $6200. The courthouse was built in 1894 using buff color brick in a Romanesque Revival style.

Over the years the courthouse became overcrowded and additions were added to the courthouse. Some of the additions were sympathetic to the original Romanesque Revival style and others were not. By the 1990's the county had outgrown the courthouse again and had offices located in various buildings around the town. First Public Service Building was built in 1997 to house some the county agencies. Then it was decided to move all courthouse activities to a new building however public outcry demanded that the historic courthouse be preserved as the county courthouse. A $6.9 million bond issue passed overwhelmingly. In 1998 the courthouse was vacated and the interior gutted and renovated, a large addition was built to the east following the Romanesque Revival style , and the less sympathetic addition was modified to fit the original design. The courthouse house reopened in June 2000. - source

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