Deep inside the Courthouse Square, past hundreds of limestone rocks, two stories of offices and a locked wooden door, lies the staircase to a tower. It’s the path that leads to the innermost portions of the building. 

Every wall is lined with signatures, often with years visitors were there. Then another door leads upward into the tower.

Scaffolding built of plywood offers multiple flights of stairs, first to the mechanism that keeps the entire town on time, four identical clock faces, then in the culminating peak, the flagpole atop the building’s 65-foot tower.  

This is what sits inside of Clay County’s Courthouse. 

During a particularly warm day, Facility Manager, Arnie Knoettgen took out a window for airflow, offering a direct path to the building’s solid stone balconies.

Working for the county for 25 years – he started doing maintenance on county facilities – he’s not been the Facility Manager of the Courthouse for the last two decades. 

“I thought about painting up here but then I thought it wouldn’t be very nice to cover up all that history,” he said of the signatures. Names dating back to the early 1900s are drawn in bold, black marker. One is engraved on a limestone’s interior. 

Turning Back Time

Originally, the clock faces were kept in time by weights, Knoettgen said. Then electricity was added, running wires to all four clocks that are manned by a single machine, #1207 made by the Set Thomas Clock Co. in 1903. (It’s likely that this is when the clock project was completed.) The clock was reset by hand, with a staff member climbing handmade wooden steps at a set interval. Adding power eliminated that job. The clock mechanism still sits in a large wooden box that’s accessed by a door. 

Formerly glass faces, the clock is now outfitted with plexiglass. Holiday lights have also been added in recent years. Those, too, are wired in the system. Knoettgen said they can be turned on and changed in color from a desk below. 

“We’ve just come to expect too much in this day and age,” he said. The building formerly had steam heat, which would create a wide variety in temps throughout. “It was one thermostat that controlled the entire Courthouse, then the AC was two thermostats; the airflow wasn’t the best. It’s just been a godsend that they put in the Cadillac of heating and cooling when they did it.”

Of the current commissioners, who vote on such upgrades, he said, “If they’re going to do something, they’re going to do it right and it hasn’t always been that way.” 

Other building maintenance has included replacing large stones in the tower. 

“We probably put in 100 stones – big ones, we rebuilt the tower,” (time?) Knoettgen said this was done with a crane on the outside and lifted stones in through a window. Meanwhile, old stones were jackhammered out of place. 

“You won’t believe the amount of work we’ve done,” he said. Adding his amazement about how intricate the workmanship was, from masons perfectly matching stones to the interior carpentry, and beyond. “It was different back then; everything was done by hand.” 

During his tenure, Knoettgen has found all types of items, especially when remodeling.

 The treasurer’s office was formerly a judge chamber, he said. When cleaning out the vault they found multiple whiskey bottles. 

“We did some research and found out the judge drank a lot,” he laughed. The vault had also contained old records. Knoettgen said he took out platforms and new lighting. “We just made it usable for this day and age.” 

Let the Flag Fly

The Courthouse notably boasts an American Flag from its highest point in the tower. Knoettgen said on average, it has to be replaced every 90 days due to high winds or other weather. Ice storms are notoriously bad for flag fibers, and Kansas winds fray edges. 

However, the real work comes when parts of the pole need maintenance, he said. The pole’s truck – the upper portion that holds the rope in place – has broken numerous times, usually from wind. 

Before his time in the Courthouse, Knoettgen said it was replaced by a local tree trimmer, who went out the tower’s window and climbed the pole to replace the piece by hand. The next time it broke, the trimmer said he was too old for the climb and the pole was rusted. Instead, they enlisted a local firetruck to hoist a new pole. It went in through a courtroom window and up two levels of tower floors through holes cut for the install. That was just over a decade ago, when Johnny Jensen raised the flag, he said. For years he had also been in charge of hanging lights from the tower with Public Utilities.

While that pole held up, the truck again broke a few years later. Knoettgen said he purchased a more robust truck to withstand harsher conditions. 

“Hopefully that will hold up,” he said. That flagpole, just like the tower stones, to the HVAC system, he said, has to be regularly maintenance in order to keep everything in good condition.

“They don’t make buildings like this anymore,” he said. “I love it. If there’s a tornado or something, I’m staying right here in the basement. These thick walls, this building, it’s not going anywhere.”