Mono County Courthouse

An architectural masterpiece done in Victorian style, the Courthouse took only a short year to complete, beginning in 1880 and costing nearly $40,000. Such speed ensured Bridgeport would remain the County Seat over Bodie. As the second oldest operational courthouse in California, it was designed in the shape of a Greek cross with it's widest measurements being seventy-four by eighty feet. Large, flat rocks under thirty inch blocks of cut granite make up the foundation. The outside is finished with redwood siding forty feet high. Throughout the inside are floors of thick Oregon pine and windows of French crystal sheet glass. A ten foot wide staircase adorned in Spanish cedar leads to the upper level Court rooms. Electricity and indoor plumbing were added in the 1930’s.

Dating from 1880, the present Mono County Courthouse is the second oldest continuously-used county courthouse in the state of California. Despite the building's antiquity, it is the county's third courthouse. The first courthouse was a two story brick building located in the mining Boomtown of Aurora. Aurora was the county seat until a resurveying of the California-Nevada state line revealed the mining town to be in Nevada. The Mono County records were hastily moved to Bodie, then Bridgeport where the exiting American hotel was purchased to become the second county courthouse. When this building proved too small, the large, permanent courthouse was constructed in the New England style.