Because of the significance of the building's association with the WPA project of the 1930s and of the artwork on the building it received National Historic Place status before its Fiftieth birthday, somewhat of a rarity. The courthouse was completed in 1940, 25 years after the creation of Boundary County in 1915, meaning that this year, 2015, is the county's centennial year.
On January 23, 2013, the date of the 98th anniversary of the county's birth, the online newspaper
published an article on the occasion. Much of the article dealt with the building of the courthouse, which was designed by the noted architectural firm of Whitehouse & Price of Spokane, WA. The pertinent half of the article is reproduced below.
Boundary County
celebrates 98th birthday
In the mid-1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression, a Bonners Ferry newspaper man, Charlie King, who owned and operated the Bonners Ferry Herald at the time, was given much of the credit for spurring the construction of a new county courthouse, the one now located at 6452 Kootenai Street.
A 60-percent super majority of votes was needed to pass a $50,000 bond to build a new courthouse; when put to voters, 70-percent said yes, and county commissioners hired the firm of White[house] and Price, Spokane. The county applied to have the structure built as a project of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Project Administration, which would provide the labor for construction.
Because of the regularly flooding Kootenai River, the architects recommended the building be built of concrete, to be built on a cement slab. Ground tests showed good silt going down 15-feet, allowing the 15-inch steel reinforced slab, with an integral five-foot wall all around the building, to be poured without the support of pilings.
Clifford Hill, superintendent of construction, oversaw the $365,000 project through dedication in 1938.
After the old courthouse was torn down in 1940, a big hole was excavated in the yard, and with great fanfare the heavy cement vaults of the old building were tipped in and buried.
It turned out that the advice White[house] and Price gave was good. In 1948, the Kootenai again overflowed its banks and floodwaters rose eight feet up the sides of the courthouse. Offices were moved upstairs, business went on as usual and the Boundary County Courthouse came through undamaged.
From the News Bonners Ferry