The HHS Courthouse - Jail Site
Our site and the ruins you find there hold stories, some of them famous, from Hillsboro’s town management and legal system of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. We encourage you to visit and enjoy the old ruins of the Courthouse and Jail, but remember not to climb on the ruins, and please do not take anything from the site.
Courthouse
Sierra County was created in 1884 with Hillsboro as the county seat. For county administration, two rooms were rented in an existing building, almost certainly the building that is now the Black Range Museum. An adobe building on the corner of Main and First Avenue was later purchased for $500. The building served as the sheriff’s office as well as district court.
Desiring to build an imposing courthouse, the county commission authorized $10,000 in bonds already in 1885. The grand jury and the local Sierra County Advocate newspaper were clamoring for the new courthouse in 1887 and 1888. Contracts were finally made and the Sierra County Courthouse was officially dedicated in November of 1892. (The first county building at Main and First was rented out after 1892 and sold in 1902.)
An attempt to change the county seat to Cutter was approved by Territorial legislature in 1909, but Edward Tittmann was sent to DC and got the law overturned. Then in 1936 a vote to move the county seat to Hot Springs was overwhelmingly approved. However, the result was challenged in lawsuits, and was supported by citizens such as Sadie Orchard. The case, titled “Orchard v. Sierra County Commissioners” and argued by Edward Tittmann, reached the New Mexico Supreme Court where it was denied once again in late 1938. The Sierra County commissioners promptly moved to sell the Hillsboro courthouse property for the highest bid of $440. The demolition of the old courthouse soon followed in 1939. The property was then sold in 1940 to a Hatch auto dealer, and in 1947 the Hatch man sold it to Jaquita Sullivan. The HHS bought the property from her son James Sullivan in 2019.
Jailhouse
When Hillsboro was established as the county seat, one of the early acts of the county commissioners was to purchase leg irons for prisoners. By 1893 the county building was purchased on the south side of Main Street at First Avenue (as shown on the 1893 and 1898 Sanborn-Perrin insurance maps). A jail was built in the backyard at that site and iron jail cells were installed.
After the new courthouse was completed in 1892, the grand jury recommended building a new jail, with an especially strong argument in 1905.
In June of 1906 the county commissioners let a contract to H. F. Brown to build the jail for $4,000, and the new jail behind the courthouse was completed two months later. You can see the jail in the photo here on the right; it is the windowless building behind the courthouse.
The metal jail cells on Main and First were hauled up to the site. Part of the rock building with a metal pitched roof was apparently built around these cells. The jail house was then abandoned when the county seat was moved to Hot Springs in 1938. (At some point those original metal jail cells were extracted and placed at the west end of the TorC courthouse).
