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Home Services Volunteers Department Information/History Safety Information |
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Mariposa County Courthouse
On Monday June 19, 1854, at the Court of Sessions meeting it was declared that a Public Building Fund be created, and that Twenty-five cents ($.25) be assessed and collected on each one hundred dollars worth of real and personal property to be paid into the county treasury to create a fund known as a Public Building Fund to take care of building the county courthouse in Mariposa County. From all indications the work on the new courthouse progressed very rapidly and on February 12, 1855, R.H. Daly, attorney for the contractors, Fox and Shriver came before the court and made a motion that the building be accepted. The building was accepted by the court for use and benefit of the county. On Saturday March 12, 1866 the Board of Supervisors decided to put a clock and cupola on top of the courthouse. The Supervisors purpose having a town clock and having taken the preliminary steps to putting the necessary addition to the courthouse roof. It is expected that the people will be able to distinguish the exact time for a mile and that the bell attached will be heard all over the county and part of Fresno. Courts will be run by it and jurymen and witnesses in default, punished for delay. On Saturday August 25, 1866 the clock on top of the courthouse is up and running and the hours are pounded out as they pass the heavy bell that beats with regularity. The week of November 2, 1907 Electrician Joe Youd of Mt. Bullion was installing electric lights in the county jail. Lights were also to be placed in the clerk’s office and in the vaults of the courthouse and will prove of incalculable convenience. On April 1, 1930 like a bolt out of the sky came quick action and clever detective work on the part of Sheriff Castagnetto, Undersheriff Ellingham and Deputy Earl Johnstone, bringing to justice one of the persons who broke and tore away the hands from the historical old clock, on the courthouse at Mariposa on the night of March 31, 1930. It may have been April Fools day for the rest of the world, but to the residents of Mariposa it was vandalism on part of those who tore away those ancient hands and disfigured the historical timepiece that had withstood the ravages of time and been protected with tenderest care by all for sixty-five years. Mariposans were amazed on the morning of April 1, 1930 when they gazed toward the clock and found the four large hands missing, the news spread like wildfire and soon a group of people were gathered here and talking of the crime. The Sheriff and his men soon had a clue to the crime, when footprints were discovered on the roof of the building. The footprints compared and tallied with a certain shoe found in the room of one of twenty-five University of California students in the Yosemite Hotel. Further investigation revealed one of the wooden wedges that fell from one of the old wooden hands and as a consequence O. Andy Miller, a member of this U.C. student body, was placed under arrest. He admitted his guilt and led officers to the place where the four hands and the iron clapper from the bell had been hidden in a pile of rubbish near the hotel. The wooden hands were mutilated and practically destroyed. Miller was taken before the local Justice of the Peace and released upon depositing One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) cash bail. He was to appear the following Saturday and enter a plea. The residents of the town have been aroused for several days by the desecration of one of California’s most beloved shrines, and the guilty party or parties might well consider themselves lucky in being treated so leniently. For the past eight days, Maynard McElligott has been exercising his re-constructive powers and by the use of metal sheets and reinforcements, has repaired the hands to such an extent that they will be replaced on the ancient clock this week and time will again be on its way in the Sierras. To most people of Mariposa it appeared that injury was heaped upon insult as a result of the manner in which the recent trial of O. Andy Miller was handled in the local Justice Court. No doubt the Justice exercised his rights and privileges in determining the amount of punishment that should be handed out to the guilty party for the act of vandalism performed, although this did not meet the public’s approval. The great injustice done to the public was the "STAR CHAMBER" methods adopted by the justice in conducting the case. O. Andy Miller was never compelled to appear before the public and be subjected to the gaze of the people he insulted. Rather than this, he made a number of private trips to the abode of the Justice and there it is said, upon one of these trips he paid a fine of One Hundred Fifty Dollars ($150.00), while the public waited at the courthouse to hear the pleadings of the prisoner and the reprimands that should have been offered by the Justice for the crime committed. Page Navigation |
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Prior
to the year of 1855, all court and county matters were taken care of in a
small and inadequate log building near the site of the present large
historical courthouse.