Year Built: 1928
Architect: Lang and Witchell
The Eastland County Courthouse is located in Eastland, Texas, which is also the county seat.
The county was named for Capt. William Mosby Eastland, a hero at the battle of San Jacinto, member of the Mier Expedition, and a victim of the Black Bean Episode. The Black Bean Episode, an aftermath of the Mier Expedition, resulted from an attempted escape of the captured Texans as they were being marched from Mier to Mexico City. After an escape at Salado, Tamaulipas, on February 11, 1843, some 176 of the men were recaptured within about a week. A decree that all who participated in the break were to be executed was modified to an order to kill every tenth man. The victims were chosen by lottery, each man drawing a bean from a jar containing 176 beans, seventeen black beans being the death.
The story of “Old Rip” helped to draw attention to the county during the 1920s. Old Rip was a horned lizard, placed in the cornerstone of the old Eastland County courthouse in 1897, that supposedly emerged alive when the block was reopened in 1928. The toad became a national sensation, toured many U.S. cities, and Texas Senator Earle Bradford Mayfield presented the specimen to President Calvin Coolidge. Old Rip eventually returned home and died of pneumonia in January 1929 and is now on display in a glass and marble case at the Eastland County Courthouse. In September 1961, Old Rip briefly disappeared from the museum exhibit and was ransomed $10,000 for his return. After a city-wide search, the specimen was recovered.
