The Texas legislature created Sherman County in 1876 and named it for Texas Revolutionary soldier Sidney Sherman. The county was attached to Olham County for judicial purposes until 1889, when its population was sufficient to organize. Its first county seat was Coldwater, founded near the geographic center of the county by the Loomis family, and in 1890 a one-story stone courthouse was built there. Coldwater soon had a post office, county jail, hotel, mercantile store, and newspaper. In 1901, Stratford, in the northwest part of the county on the newly constructed Rock Island Railroad, won a controversial election to move the county seat from Coldwater. Officials moved the county records during the night and held a special session of commissioners court to secure Stratford’s rights as county seat. After the controversy faded, a two-story frame courthouse with a cupola was built there, but fire destroyed it in April 1922. In June 1922, Sherman County voters decided two major issues: Stratford defeated Texhoma, another Rock Island town on the Oklahoma border, by 370 to 209 to remain the county seat, and a week later voters approved $62,500 in bonds by 322 to 81 for a new courthouse. The commissioners court selected the Amarillo firm of Parker & Rittenberry as architects and J.W. Mordecai as contractor, met in the Christian Church until construction ended in the summer of 1923, and completed a two-story concrete courthouse with a raised basement, symmetrical facades, ionic columns, running bond brick exterior, and cast stone detailing in the classical revival style.