McKean County’s third courthouse, designed by Buffalo architect Milton Earl Beebe, was completed in 1881 at a cost of $80,000, reflecting the county’s growing importance and wealth. Before the railroad reached East Smethport in 1875, most of Smethport’s buildings clustered near the courthouse on the public square, and the courthouse grounds were enclosed by a wooden fence that allowed livestock to graze, but afterward the town spread out more evenly. No photos or drawings survive of the original 1826 McKean County Courthouse, and in 1851 a second courthouse, built on the public square in the same location as today’s courthouse by Smethport architect-builder Solomon Sartwell, replaced it. That 1851 courthouse was torn down in 1881 and replaced by the new Beebe courthouse, whose construction appears in an 1880 photograph with the McKean County Jail in the background. The 1881 courthouse was destroyed by fire in February 1940, and McKean County’s fourth courthouse was built in 1940–1941 with Thomas K. Hendryx as architect. Originally erected in 1885, the Bucktail Civil War Monument stood centered in front of the courthouse before being moved in 1941 to its present location at the left front of the courthouse.