The Tombstone courthouse represents a practical solution to the problem of securing lives and property in unorganized or poorly governed territory. It was put into effect quickly, without fumbling by men practiced in the process through their experience in Colorado, Utah, Nevada, where mining rushes had carried them in the past. Tombstone remained the county seat until 1929, when outvoted by a growing Bisbee, and the county seat was moved there. The last county office left the courthouse in 1931. Except for an ill-fated attempt to convert the courthouse into a hotel during the 1940s, the building stood vacant until 1955. When the Tombstone Restoration Commission acquired it, they began the courthouse rehabilitation and the development as a historical museum that has continued to operate as a state park since 1959. It features exhibits and thousands of artifacts which tell of Tombstone's colorful past. The courthouse in Tombstone is an elegant example of Territorial Victorian. The building is a well-integrated, stylish, yet sober and restrained culmination of that tradition When Maricopa County built its courthouse a few years later, they cribbed liberally from Tombstone's example. The Tombstone courthouse is the oldest courthouse still standing in Arizona, At the time it was built it was one of the largest buildings in Arizona Territory. The building measures 76 feet in total width; the "shaft" of the cruciform structure measures 40 feet wide; the east and west wings project nineteen feet from the main structure and are 30 feet long. The first segment to be built is 88 feet long overall. The addition to the jail and courtroom brought the total to 116 feet in length. The building is a two-story red brick structure built with five courses of runners and one of headers. Exterior angles are quoined with white stone and/white stone "dripstone course" separates the lower and upper half of the building. A one-story cupola or observation tower with a mansard roof wears a lacy gingerbread cresting that creates a kind of "widow's walk" atop all. Fenestration is symmetrical. The double-hung eight-pane windows, are set in heavy frames topped by a bracketed, heavy "territorial" cornice that echoes the strongly accented pediments atop each end wall of the building. The eave-line is deeply recessed and strongly accented with simple dentils as are the pediments of the gable ends. This theme is repeated on a smaller scale on the cupola pediments.