While the courthouse is now a National Landmark, many people will recall the lore which surrounds it and bold political larceny assigned to its origins. When the state legislature set off Iron County from Marquette County in 1885, the city of Iron River, Michigan, was designated temporary county seat. A permanent site was to be chosen later by election. Neighboring Crystal Falls, older but a few months, and more densely populated, cherished the title of county seat.

The "Stealing of the Courthouse" has been the topic of many a conversation and article. It is somewhat difficult to separate the fact from the fiction. Most versions of the story agree that a poker game was arranged to follow a board of supervisors' meeting in the temporary courthouse. The game was at its height at the Old Boyington Hotel. Two Crystal Falls men, Frank Scaddon and Burt Hughitt, left the game, pretending to go upstairs to bed. Instead they sneaked out and back to the temporary courthouse, Treasurer Hughitt cleared the safe of all county records, loaded them on a sled and took them to the railyard where they were loaded into a boxcar. The two men took the records to Stager, the oldest station in the county, and then they were put into safe keeping--Some say in a hollow pine tree, others in the Mastodon Mine.

The election was held in 1888, again stories about importing lumberjacks for the election, destroying ballots of opposing votes, and registering voters from the cemeteries are accorded to both communities. Crystal Falls won the election by a scant margin of five votes.