Stinnett was established in 1926 as a shipping stop on the Chicago, Rock Island and Gulf Railroad. The three-story buff brick and limestone structure, set above a raised basement, is the third courthouse for Hutchinson County after it was founded in 1901, and the county seat was moved here from Plemons in 1926. The discovery of oil in the area generated the need for a larger courthouse. This building, designed by Townes of Amarillo, is one of the grandest courthouses in the region, with nine bays extending each side of a five-bay central pavilion and decorated with Spanish Renaissance detail. A two-story limestone arch surmounts a monumental flight of stairs to the centered entrance portals. Third-floor windows have hemispherical lunettes in low relief, with a deep cornice above, and there is a second cornice above the attic-like fourth-floor windows. Friezes over the secondary north and south entrances depict local ranching, petroleum, and farming industries. The entire courthouse square is raised several feet above the flat landscape to give it greater prominence.
North of the courthouse across E. 5th Street and under the water tower is the Isaac McCormick Cottage, built in 1899. McCormick and his wife and eight children lived in a covered wagon while the house was built (it is barely larger than the wagon). It served as the first county meeting and polling place.