Jacob Wolf House

Shawnee and Delaware villages stood near the meeting of the White and North Fork rivers from 1819 to 1828, and trade with them drew Jacob Wolf to the site in 1824. A merchant, carpenter and blacksmith of German ancestry, he won a license to run ferries across both rivers in 1825. Izard County was created that year, and Wolf, elected to the territorial legislature in 1826, got the permanent county courthouse placed in Liberty, the town growing around his homestead. He donated the land and won the contract to build it.

The result, finished in 1829, is a two-story hewn-log house with a central breezeway, or dogtrot. It is the oldest public structure in Arkansas. The big room upstairs was the courtroom, and the clerk's office was below. John P. Houston, brother of Sam Houston, served as county clerk there. Families camped on the grounds during court sessions, socializing and playing games. By 1835 new counties had been cut from Izard, the seat moved, and Wolf had the land returned to him. The courthouse became the home of his sixteen children and five stepchildren. When Union troops tried to take the house during the Civil War, the old man is said to have attacked them with his cane and was imprisoned for several months.

The house came into public hands in the late 1930s. The Elna M. Smith Foundation restored it in the 1960s, and a 1999 grant paid for a restoration to its courthouse look, finished in 2002. Baxter County transferred it to the state in 2016.