COUNTY ORGANIZED: 1907 from Kiowa County, Oklahoma Territory.

COUNTY NAMED FOR:  The Kiowa Indian tribe.

COUNTY SEAT NAMED FOR: United States Vice President Garret A. Hobart.

COURTHOUSES: One - 1905. 

STANDING: One - 1905 brick courthouse.  This is the oldest operating courthouse in Oklahoma.

ARCHITECT: Some sources credit the design of this courthouse to notible architect J. Riely Gordon of San Antonio.  However, according to the book, James Riely Gordon: His Courthouses and Other Public Architecture, by Chris Meister, Gordon did not design the 1905 Kiowa County Courthouse that is still standing today.  Here is where the confusion comes from.

In 1902, while Oklahoma was still a Territory, Gordon was contracted to submit a design for the Kiowa courthouse, which he did.  Contractor J. W. Stokes started building the courthouse and had laid the foundation and basement and started building the walls when new county commissioners inspected the work and discovered it did not meet government specifications.  They got an injunction to stop the work, and everything built to that point had to be removed (Hobart Democrat-Chief, August 4, 1925). Another courthouse design was obtained from the U.S. Department of Interior and approved by the county (Hobart News-Republican, November 11, 1903 and November 16, 1903).  It was this design that was built, not the one by Gordon. 

In addition, this building is the same design as the 1902 Comanche County Courthouse in Lawton and the 1902 Caddo County Courthouse in Anadarko that are no longer standing.  It is likely that all three of these territorial county courthouse buildings were built from the same plans  provided by the U.S. Department of Interior.

The National Register of Historic Places (1984) lists the architect as "unknown" for the 1905 Kiowa courthouse and J. W. Stokes as the contractor.