The Concho County Courthouse was built in 1886 in the Second Empire style as designed by architects and brothers F.E. and Oscar Ruffini. The building was fashioned from rusticated stone that came from a quarry only a few miles away. The courthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is both a Texas State Antiquities Landmark and a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
The limestone temple of justice features sheet metal details, including a wide sheet metal cornice carried on ornamental brackets, pediments and mansard roofs with decorative ocular windows, and a highly ornamental cresting. Flat limestone quoins, bands, and window surrounds contrast with the field of rusticated limestone walls.
Concho County was created on Feb. 1, 1858, and organized on March 11, 1879. The county was named for the river that the Spaniards called the Concho because of the many unearthed shells.
Located just north of the Concho River and the county seat of Paint Rock is a limestone cliff some 70 feet high that boasts a tremendous display of Native American history.
According to https://thepaintedrocks.org/, the cliff features more than 1,500 pictographs in a variety of colors that include animals, humans, and geometrics. A rough date places the earliest pictographs around 1,000 years old.
In the northeast corner of the county is Lake O.H. Ivie, considered one of the best fishing lakes in the Lone Star State. On the other side of the county map in the northwest corner is the Lowake Community. Back down toward the center of the county about 5 miles east of Eola is the Barrow Museum, which includes a complete early day dentist office, china collections, and thousands of arrowheads. Concho County has one of the largest counts of wild turkeys in the State of Texas and some of the best dove hunting anywhere.
Finally, special events include the Spring Stampede, the Annual Fall Fest Celebration, the Camouflage Cotillion, and Christmas on the Square in Eden; the Summer Solstice at Paint Rock Excursions; and the Concho County Hunters’ Appreciation Lunch in Paint Rock.