Graham County Courthouse: Safford's Beaux-Arts Anchor

The Graham County Courthouse in Safford, Arizona, was completed in nineteen sixteen and stands as a fine example of Classical Revival civic architecture in rural Arizona. Graham County was carved out of Apache and Pima counties in eighteen eighty-one, and Safford won the county seat from Solomonville in nineteen fifteen, as the Gila Valley continued its transformation into one of Arizona's most productive agricultural regions, fed by irrigation from the Gila River. The courthouse's pressed-brick exterior, arched windows, and classical detailing reflected the ambitions of a county that had recently tamed a lawless frontier.

The building has housed courts and county offices ever since. The surrounding Safford area sits in the upper Gila Valley, a corridor of small farming communities at the foot of the Pinaleno Mountains, home to Mount Graham and one of the world's premier astronomical observatories.