The 1874 Park County Courthouse and Jail on Front Street is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the oldest functioning courthouses in Colorado. The brick building has a frontier simplicity that fits well with the surrounding town — no grand columns or civic pretension, just a sturdy two-storey structure that has outlasted the mining boom that built Fairplay.
The adjacent jail, built the same year, still stands and gives a sense of how rough life was in a mining county. The courthouse complex is worth a look as part of a walk along Front Street, which retains several other 19th-century commercial buildings.