Lee County Courthouse

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

From the record

“The Lee County Courthouse is a historic two-story brick county courthouse in Opelika, Alabama, the county seat of Lee County, Alabama. It was constructed in 1896 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.”
Wikipedia article Lee County Courthouse (Alabama), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 26 National Register listings published here for Lee County · listed in 1973 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. S. 9th St. between Aves. A and B, Opelika, 36801
When was it listed? July 1973
Category. building
Census division. Auburn-Opelika
Architectural style. Neoclassical architecture
National Register reference number. 73000353 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

17 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 17 fires within 5 miles of Lee County Courthouse between 1994 and 2014, burning about 381 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 were recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Debris and open burning	4
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3
Equipment and vehicle use	3
Recreation and ceremony	3
Arson/incendiarism	2
Misuse of fire by a minor	2

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
7 September 2010	Equipment and vehicle use	35 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
26 September 2014	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Alabama Forestry Commission	ECR-20140926-001
10 September 2011	Debris and open burning	2.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	3590 CR 38, AL
9 August 2000	Arson/incendiarism	under an acre	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
9 August 2000	Arson/incendiarism	2.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
31 August 1998	Debris and open burning	1.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
12 August 1995	Recreation and ceremony	3.0 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	not named
2 June 2011	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	125 acres	Alabama Forestry Commission	HWY 15 OFF N.29, AL

Every fire recorded in Lee County

Mines and quarries near this property

4 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 4 workings within 5 miles of Lee County Courthouse: 2 occurrences, 1 prospect, 1 unknown. None of them still produces. What was taken out: Mica, Aluminum, Feldspar, Mica, Iron. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
Hilyer-Knight Prospect	Iron	Occurrence
North Opelika Gibbsite Prospect	Aluminum	Occurrence	1977
T H Clower Prospect	Feldspar, Mica	Unknown
Yarborough-Smith-Neighbor Prospect	Mica	Prospect

Every working recorded in Lee County

Storms near this property

60 since 1994

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Opelika, the town this property stands in, in 60 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 28 hail, 23 thunderstorm wind, 5 tornado, 3 lightning. The reports record 1 death. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
March 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	1 killed, $50,000	no account filed
March 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$80,000	no account filed
July 2002	Lightning	Opelika	$75,000	A lightning strike caused significant damage to an Opelika Power Substation. The lightning set a fire in the substation in which flames reached heights of over 50 feet. Six hundred gallons of mineral oil subsequently leaked out of the substation.
August 1994	Tornado (F0)	Opelika	$50,000	Thunderstorm wind and what appears to have been a small tornado caused structural damage and downed trees along Highway 51 in the Beauregard area about 8.5 miles south of Opelika. Several houses sustained some damage along with numerous uprooted trees. A car was damaged by flying tin from an out-building that was destroyed.
January 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$35,000	Numerous trees and power lines were blown down near Opelika and Auburn. A few automobiles were damaged by falling trees.
July 2005	Tornado (F0)	Opelika	$34,000	National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed the damage just east of Opelika and determined the damage was the result of a tornado. The tornado touched down at approximately 340 PM CDT 8.5 miles east of Opelika, along County Road 158 just east of Lee Road 269. At least two mobile homes sustained minor damage, dozens of trees and power lines were snapped off or blown down, and a spare tire was removed from a vehicle and thrown several yards away. The tornado damage path was 1.2 miles long and 200 yards wide at its widest point. This tornado was spawned during Tropical Storm Cindy.Begin: 32 39.81/85 14.07 End: 32 40.79/85 14.49
November 2004	Tornado (F0)	Opelika	$28,000	no account filed
January 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$15,000	no account filed
July 1997	Tornado (F0)	Opelika	$12,000	What was believed to be a weak tornado touched down briefly near the intersection of US 280 and Interstate 85 moving northerly for about 3- tenths of a mile. Damage was minimal. A fence was blown down at a motel, a couple of cars had windows broken out, and air conditioning units on a retail complex were moved.
May 2003	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$8,000	Trees were blown down just off of CR 112 in Beauregard.
November 1997	Hail	Opelika	$8,000	Golf ball size hail was reported just south of Opelika.
October 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$8,000	no account filed
September 1996	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$8,000	no account filed
December 2002	Lightning	Opelika	$7,000	Lightning struck a communications tower owned by Lee County damaging public service radios operated by the county and the State of Alabama, computers, and telephone equipment. The tower is the site of the only EMWIN re-broadcast station in Alabama, and it was taken off the air by the lightning strike.
March 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$5,000	Trees were downed in several locations around the city.
June 2011	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$3,000	Trees were blown down across numerous locations around the city of Opelika.
May 2002	Lightning	Opelika	$3,000	A lightning strike caused minor damage to a home in Opelika.
July 1997	Hail	Opelika	$3,000	Dime size hail was reported in Beauregard, south of Opelika.
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$2,000	Several power lines were blown down in the city of Opelika.
June 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$2,000	Trees were blown down onto power lines in the city of Opelika.
May 2006	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$2,000	Trees were blown down on Lee Road.
January 2001	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$2,000	Trees were blown down in the Beauregard area.
July 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	$2,000	Several trees were reported down in southern sections of Opelika.
October 2004	Hail	Opelika	$2,000	no account filed
February 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	-	Numerous trees were downed in the Auburn and Opelika areas of Lee County.
April 2025	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	-	Trees were downed in Opelika, including on Highway 80, Highway 51, and Lee Road 40.
January 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	-	Several uprooted trees and downed power lines in Opelika.
August 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	-	Multiple trees uprooted in the area of Uniroyal Road and Ridge Road, causing power outages.
August 2023	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	-	A second round of storms resulted in more trees being knocked down in Opelika.
July 2018	Tornado (EF0)	Opelika	-	National Weather Service meteorologists surveyed damage in central Lee County and determined that it was consistent with an EF0 tornado, with maximum sustained winds near 85 mph. The tornado touched down in the city of Opelika near the intersection of South 3rd Street and Avenue D. The tornado tracked south and snapped or uprooted many trees before crossing Interstate 85. It then shifted towards the southeast as it crossed Chewacla Road, where it continued to snap or uproot trees. The tornado shifted back to a southerly track and crossed Highway 69 and Royal Drive. It then took a southwest track before lifting near Stringfellow Road.
December 2015	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	-	Several trees uprooted and some windows were blown out just east of the town of Opelika.
July 2013	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	-	Trees were uprooted in several locations in and around Opelika.
May 2009	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	-	The East Alabama Medical Center recorded a peak wind gust of 61 mph.
March 2006	Hail	Opelika	-	Quarter sized hail was reported in the northern part of the city.
April 2006	Hail	Opelika	-	Reported near Fox Run.
May 2006	Hail	Opelika	-	Quarter sized hail fell for several minutes in and around Opelika.
May 2006	Hail	Opelika	-	Reported on the northern side of Opelika.
October 2006	Funnel Cloud	Opelika	-	A funnel cloud was reported just north of Opelika.
March 2003	Hail	Opelika	-	Pea to penny size hail fell across the Opelika area.
August 2002	Hail	Opelika	-	Pea to dime size hail was reported in and around the city of Opelika.
February 2000	Hail	Opelika	-	Dime size hail was reported in Beauregard.
February 2000	Hail	Opelika	-	Nickel size hail was reported near the intersection of CR 166 and CR 146 near Parker Crossroads.
February 2000	Hail	Opelika	-	Quarter size hail fell in Opelika.
March 2000	Hail	Opelika	-	Dime size hail was reported in Opelika.
February 1999	Hail	Opelika	-	Dime sized hail was reported near Opelika.
May 1999	Hail	Opelika	-	Nickel to quarter size hail was reported in Beauregard.
June 1999	Hail	Opelika	-	Dime size hail was reported in Opelika and also in the Plainview area.
June 1999	Hail	Opelika	-	Quarter size hail fell just south of Opelika.
April 1998	Hail	Opelika	-	Dime size hail was reported in Opelika.
May 1998	Hail	Opelika	-	Dime size hail was reported in Opelika.
October 1998	Hail	Opelika	-	Dime to nickel sized hail was reported north of Phenix City in extreme southeast Lee county.
March 1995	Hail	Opelika	-	Three-quarter inch hail was reported at Opelika.
May 1995	Thunderstorm Wind	Opelika	-	A wind gust to 57 miles an hour was reported at the East Alabama Medical Center on their measuring equipment in Opelika. Trees were downed in scattered areas across the county. One tree fell and blocked a road for a short time on the Auburn University campus.
April 2017	Hail	Opelika	-	no account filed
May 2012	Hail	Opelika	-	no account filed
May 2012	Hail	Opelika	-	no account filed
April 2008	Hail	Opelika	-	no account filed
June 2007	Hail	Opelika	-	no account filed
April 1998	Hail	Opelika	-	no account filed
June 1998	Hail	Opelika	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in Lee County

Newspapers printed here

1 paper

1 paper published in this town, digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.

Newspaper	Published
Der Querschnitt	1945 to 194?

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Railroad Avenue Historic District	0.2 miles	1984
U.S. Post Office	0.3 miles	1976
Geneva Street Historic District	0.4 miles	1987
Northside Historic District	0.4 miles	2001
Dr. J.W. Darden House	0.5 miles	2009
Pepperell Mill and Mill Village Historic District	2.3 miles	2014

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 73000353 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Lee County	All 26 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.