Lehmi County Courthouse, Salmon, Idaho

by AV Tim Fullum

The Lemhi County Courthouse, in the town of Salmon, Idaho was built in1909.  (I thought I included a picture of the actual building under construction.  I took it from a picture on the back of a calendar that was published by the Salmon Historical Society.)  Though basically a plain, rectangular box-shaped building, I was interested in the details of the corners, entrance, roof dormer, and windows, that seemed to lend themselves to Anchor modeling.  An ugly, functional addition was put on the back and west end of the building in recent years, so I had to guess how the back looked.  My wife, who is from Salmon and knew the pre-addition look of the place, assured me that, so far as she could remember, it was symmetrical and generally as I modeled it.  Her cousin works in the building, and I'm attempting to get her to get me a copy of the building's construction drawings, which still exist.  They would answer the questions about how it looked for sure.  The biggest problem for me in constructing the model was the roof.  The closest I could match the slope was with 1:2 slope roof stones.  I don't have enough stones to do all the corners and valleys, so the roof is incomplete and an approximation at best.  Because the building is larger than any beams I have to span it, I just built walls inside to more or less approximate the interior layout and provide shorter spans for the roof support beams.


* * *

* * *

* * * * * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

* * *

The original courthouse

* * * * * * * * *