Cassia County bought an unfinished hovel in 1885 for its first courthouse in Idaho Territory, where disputes were sometimes settled at gunpoint. During the 1890s, conflicts between cattle and sheep ranchers over water and grass made the courthouse the setting for one of the most publicized trials in the territory. Jackson Lee Davis, better known as Diamondfield Jack, had been hired by the Sparks-Harrell cattle company to keep sheepherders from crossing to the west side of Goose Creek. Because of his reputation and an earlier nonfatal shooting, he was arrested for the murder of two sheepherders and became a pawn in wider struggles between cattlemen and sheepherders, Mormons and non-Mormons, and Democrats and Republicans. The sensational case drew prominent lawyers: William E. Borah, later an Idaho senator, served as the chief prosecutor, while James Hawley of Boise, later governor of Idaho, and Kirkland I. Perky, once a law partner of William Jennings Bryan, defended Davis. Convicted on circumstantial evidence in February 1896 and sentenced to hang, Davis remained in prison until two cattlemen confessed to the murders; after nearly seven years and several stays of execution, the State Board of Pardons exonerated him. He later moved to Nevada and became a successful mine operator in Tonopah and Goldfield before dying in Las Vegas in 1949 after being hit by a taxi.