Dallas County Courthouse, Buffalo, Missouri

When I first saw the Dallas County Courthouse in downtown Buffalo I thought it was one of the plainest and most nondescript county courthouses I had ever seen. It is a squatty one-story metal building with brick veneer covering the lower portion. The courthouse has almost no lawn and occupies the central square in downtown Buffalo. It was built in 1958 to replace a much more grand old brick courthouse which was destroyed by fire.

As a proponent of low taxes and limited government, I thought this "new" courthouse was absolutely beautiful. It shows that the people of Dallas have higher priorities than to over tax their citizenry to build a showplace courthouse that would be a monument to political power and big government. Or maybe this was just the best that they could do.