In 1866, after prisoners escaped from local jails, West Virginia's legislature authorized the purchase of land in Moundsville for the new state's penitentiary. The wooden structure was replaced by a gothic-style stone and brick building (West Virginia Penitentiary now operated as a tourist attraction), probably modeled upon a facility opened in 1858 in Joliet, Illinois. It remained West Virginia's maximum security penitentiary from 1876 until 1995 (with a section for female inmates until construction of a separate facility in the 1940s). A more modern set of buildings at the town's outskirts is now the northern regional jail. The Marshall County courthouse was rebuilt in 1876.