Settlement was retarded by the War of 1812, during which Indians friendly with the British murdered a group of settlers at the later site of Mound City.[2] Meanwhile, as railroad construction approached the area, a riverside landowner decided to plat a town in the southern part of the county in 1854, and a Cincinnati company platted another town nearby in the following year;[1]: 53 these two locations, Mound City and Emporium City, merged under the former name in 1857.[1]: 54 Mound City's location kept it busy during the Civil War, as a Union Navy base for gunboat maintenance was built on the shoreline and a large naval hospital operated in a former warehouse.[1]: 54 Constructed in 1912, the current Pulaski County Courthouse is a two-story brick building with a belt course topping its five-section facade: a one-window section with slight battlements sits at either end, a post and lintel with Doric capitals frames the central entrance and one second-story window, and four windows pierce each floor of the intermediate sections.Remodelled in 1964 and deemed in excellent condition by a later Illinois Historic Preservation Agency survey,[3] it remains in use by the county government.