Washington County Courthouse

Washington County Courthouse
Corner of Second and Putnam Streets

The Washington County Courthouse, built in 1901, contains several memorials to local servicemen and women, including photographs of county veterans who lost their lives in World War I, Korea and Vietnam. A World War II mural on the second floor memorializes the sacrifices of local veterans in that war. Among other things located on the second floor is the county’s 2001 state bicentennial bell, Native American symbols in the floor tiles (often mistaken for swastikas) and the County Recorder's office containing land records dating to the founding of Marietta.

The interior also includes marble facings on the third floor walls. Under the tremendous pressure and heat within the earth, sedimentary limestone transformed into marble, a metamorphic rock. The jagged black lines you can see in the marble (called stylolites) are carbon, the remains of impurities within the original rock.

There is an additional mural at the front of the Geology Annex that illustrates dinosaurs and plants from the Jurassic Period, 150 million years ago. Both a meat-eating Allosaurus and a plant-eating Stegosaurus are shown on this mural. Marietta College professors and students regularly travel to digs in Utah to excavate dinosaur fossils.