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Reported phenomena — as catalogued
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1891 Late Victorian courthouse where Arizona's most notorious frontier trials played out — and where a headless apparition still reportedly walks
135 N. Pinal St, Florence, AZ 85132
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The building functions as a county administrative facility. Public access to common areas during business hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic redbrick structure; interior renovated 2012
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1891 · National Register of Historic Places (1978) · Pearl Hart Trial (1899) · Eva Dugan Sanity Hearing (1930) · Winnie Ruth Judd Sanity Hearing (1933) · Last Old West Stagecoach Robbery Case
Florence, Arizona was a territorial hub long before Arizona achieved statehood, and the 1891 courthouse reflected that ambition. Designed by James M. Creighton and built of redbrick with a decorative clock tower, the 15,000-square-foot building replaced a smaller, inadequate predecessor and served as the seat of Pinal County justice for more than a century. The clockwork mechanism was never installed — the tower's painted faces have held at 11:44 since the day the building opened.
The courthouse's courtroom and jail processed a remarkable catalog of frontier crime. Pearl Hart arrived in 1899 after her stagecoach robbery near Globe — the last stagecoach robbery of the Old West period — and was jailed in the building while awaiting trial. In 1930, Eva Dugan faced a sanity hearing there following her conviction for the murder of a Tucson rancher. The hearing found her competent; she was hanged at the Arizona State Prison in Florence later that year. Her execution was botched — the gallows drop decapitated her — making her the only woman ever executed by the state of Arizona. The shock of the event prompted Arizona to abandon hanging in favor of gas execution. Winnie Ruth Judd, convicted of killing two women in Phoenix and shipping their dismembered bodies to Los Angeles in a trunk, underwent a separate sanity hearing at the courthouse in 1933. She was deemed insane and committed rather than executed.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 2, 1978. It was declared one of Arizona's most endangered historic buildings in 2007. A $6 million renovation completed in December 2012 restored and expanded the structure to 24,000 square feet. The iron bars from the original jail remain in place on the main floor as a deliberate historical marker.
Sources
The haunting lore at the Pinal County Courthouse clusters around the building's most violent chapter: the 1930 execution of Eva Dugan and its aftermath. Her botched hanging — resulting in decapitation on the gallows — generated lasting local legend, and security personnel working the building after hours have reported a headless figure in 1930s-era judicial clothing moving through the former courtroom areas.
The reports are not limited to one figure. Disembodied voices and unexplained door-slamming have been documented during overnight hours by building staff. Division 2, the judges' chambers, generates repeated reports of phantom tobacco smoke with no identifiable source — no one has smoked in the building in decades, and the smell appears and vanishes without pattern.
Paranormal investigators have noted a general sense of being watched in the former jail areas on the main floor, where the original iron bars from the territorial-era lockup remain in place. The concentration of legally significant death and suffering — not only Eva Dugan's case but Pearl Hart's imprisonment and Winnie Ruth Judd's proceedings — gives the building an unusual density of documented dark history for a structure still in active county use.
Notable Entities
Walk the ground floor of the 1891 redbrick courthouse, including the former jail room retaining its original iron bars. The clock tower's painted face — hands permanently fixed at 11:44 due to 19th-century budget constraints — is visible from the exterior. The building served Pinal County government continuously from 1891 through its 2012 renovation.
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