Denton County Courthouse-on-the-Square

The courthouse was built in 1896 to W. C. Dodson's design, of limestone from Denton, pink granite from the Austin area, red sandstone from the Pecos region and tan sandstone from Mineral Wells. It was restored in 2004 from the original blueprints. The first county courthouse had been a log building at Alton, a few miles from the present town, built about 1850.

John Bunyan Denton, the Methodist preacher and lawyer for whom the county is named, was killed on May 1841, in an attack on a Keechi village at Village Creek, where he served as a captain and, by one account, was in immediate charge of the attackers. His body was buried and moved more than once. In 1901 the Pioneer Association of Denton County reburied it in the southeast corner of the courthouse lawn, where it remains.

A Confederate monument stood on the grounds from 1918. Willie Hudspeth, a retired teacher and Vietnam veteran, protested it for almost twenty-one years, usually on Sundays. In June 2020 the county commissioners voted to remove it, and Judge Eads called it a matter of public safety. Inside, the Courthouse-on-the-Square Museum tells the history of Denton County. Admission is free, tours are given on request, and the museum is closed Sundays.