In 1883, the Todd County Commissioners agreed to build a substantial public building high on a hill above the little frontier village of Long Prairie.
The three-story Romanesque structure was to be of cream-colored brick, cement and native lumber. It would house the courts and the county offices and would be built for the ages during a time when clap board or log construction was the vogue.
The commissioners agreed to spend the grand sum of $20,000. This during a time when most anything the ordinary citizen needed was valued in pennies. The courthouse would stand next to the jail.
This statement about the solidity and longevity of justice and law was certainly affected by the dark deeds of autumn 1879. At that time Black John Meide, and his brother Mike, abducted the mail order bride of one Mr. Colway and, later, murdered him and his partner Steinhuber with their ax. The Meides were apprehended by a posse and brought to the jail. The mutilated bodies of Colway and Steinhuber were taken to the courthouse and laid on benches for viewing. The citizens of the county were stirred. By midnight on Nov. 6 Black John was swinging from a tree. Mike was spirited away by jailers to St. Cloud via wagon, riverboat and train.
The hanging tree is gone now, as are the jail and the wooden courthouse where the bodies were laid out. But the 1883 courthouse stands. The building has not changed these 127 years. In 1938 area Works Progress Administration men constructed a stone wall around courthouse hill. They also built a grand staircase on the north side. The staircase, weathered after 80 years of minimal maintenance, leads to a vista overlooking the village and surrounding area. Snapping in the wind, high over head, is the American flag. Next to the flag, the WPA men erected a granite monument to Todd County’s fallen WWI soldiers. Many of those WPA men went on to fight in WWII and, perhaps, some of their names are on the plaque next to those from WWI and Vietnam.
It is quiet up there on courthouse hill with the flag snapping and the names of the dead. The courthouse is now abandoned and only houses a 9-1-1 phone system and dusty records.
Had Colway been able to call 9-1-1 in 1879, perhaps the building would never have been constructed.
