Historic Prescott

HISTORIC PRESCOTT
An Illustrated History of Prescott & Yavapai County
by Agnes Franz
A publication of the Prescott Chamber of Commerce

Thank you for your interest in this HPNbooks publication.
For more information about other HPNbooks publications, or information about
producing your own book with us, please visit www.hpnbooks.com.

HISTORIC PRESCOTT
An Illustrated History of Prescott & Yavapai County
by Agnes Franz
Published by the Prescott Chamber of Commerce
Historical Publishing Network
A division of Lammert Incorporated
San Antonio, Texas

The rocks of Granite Dells reflected in
the waters of Watson Lake.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
First Edition
Copyright © 2004 Historical Publishing Network
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing
from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Historical Publishing Network, 11555 Galm Road, Suite 100, San Antonio, Texas, 78254. Phone (210) 688-9006.
ISBN: 1-893619-27-3
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 2003113009
Historic Prescott: An Illustrated History of Prescott & Yavapai County
author: Agnes Franz
cover artist: Eriko
contributing writer for “Sharing the Heritage”: Kathryn Agrell
Historical Publishing Network
president: Ron Lammert
vice president: Barry Black
project managers: Wynn Buck
director of operations: Charles A. Newton III
administration: Angela Lake
Donna M. Mata
book sales: Dee Steidle
graphic production: Colin Hart
Michael Reaves
PRINTED IN SINGAPORE
2 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CONTENTS
4 INTRODUCTION
4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
5 CHAPTER I everybody’s hometown
9 CHAPTER II the Whiskey Row Fire
11 CHAPTER III Bucky O’Neill - Rough Rider
13 CHAPTER IV a giant county - Yavapai
15 CHAPTER V life of Prescott business
19 CHAPTER VI Prescott’s Chinese history
21 CHAPTER VII home on the ranchland
24 CHAPTER VIII Indian way of change
27 CHAPTER IX good sports
29 CHAPTER X law & some order
32 CHAPTER XI paint & sculpture
35 CHAPTER XII territorial medicine
39 CHAPTER XIII minerals & man
42 CHAPTER XIV Prescott embellished
47 CHAPTER XV tracks to and from Prescott
50 CHAPTER XVI rodeo
55 BIBLIOGRAPHY
56 SHARING THE HERITAGE
102 SPONSORS
103 INDEX
Contents ✦ 3

INTRODUCTION
Land of the hills, land of the Yavapai!
Enchanted lands of pines, and wind, and sun,
My star of hope shines nightly in your sky,
And all your beauty and my dreams are one.
— Sharlot M. Hall
How did Prescott get to be so darn captivating and idyllic?
A look past some of the new, well-appointed mountainside homes explains much of what the town is all about. The influences of
geography, early innovations, and historical accidents unfolded to create today’s Prescott universe.
The plaque in front of Goodwin Street Post Office tells us that the town was, “Founded 1864 on Granite Creek. Early source of
placer gold former territorial capital of Arizona now a center for ranching, mining, health; especially asthma relief. Located here on
site of old Ft. Whipple is Whipple Veterans Hospital, Seat of first governor’s mansion and Arizona Pioneers’ Home. Frontier days TM
Oldest Rodeo in West began here.”
The new settlement was named “Prescott” in 1864 to honor William Hickling Prescott, author of The History of the Conquest
of Mexico. There is no evidence that the author ever lived in this town bearing his name.
Penetrating beyond the malls and national franchises, the older part of Prescott takes you to the past. Before industry came, Prescott
stood out as an important center of trade and finance. Miles of primitive uncharted mountain country challenged and welcomed early
pioneers. The immediate terrain ranges from rolling grass-covered hills and flatlands to mountains. Unlike many other parts of
Arizona, Prescott has four seasons, all relatively mild. Citizens have changed from mountain men on horseback to businessmen with
corporate jets and automobiles.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Learning how rich Prescott is with history, I have tried to make this the book the town deserves.
My thanks to the archivists at Sharlot Hall Museum and Smoki Museum, The Daily Courier, Prescott Chamber of Commerce,
Prescott Public Library staff, Yavapai Indian Tribe, Hall’s Cinema Museum, Jim Konecny–Prescott Frontier Days, Inc., Professional
Rodeo Cowboys Association, and so very many folks who love Prescott and shared their knowledge and time.
Thank you, my gang, The Professional Writers of Prescott, who critiqued.
“Everybody’s Home Town” really did its own heavy lifting with all its charm and enterprise.
Agnes Franz
June 2003
4 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER I
E VERYBODY’ S
H OMETOWN
The survival of early settlers depended upon their ability to cooperate with their neighbors—Old
West values like integrity, self-reliance, and accountability guided decisions, actions, and interactions.
Arizona people cherished their independence and willingness to take care of their own. By 1864
there were 14 log cabins and 50 townspeople living in Prescott.
Early land developers had sold seventy-three lots by June of that year, and pioneer New Englanders
brought a sense of order that was reflected in the new structures and corrals that replaced the miners’
temporary camps and canvas tent stores. The Unionist military helped established the political
configuration but not the cultural tone of the town. Builders set up log cabins using available timber and
later built stately peaked-roof Victorian homes, totally unlike the Spanish and Mexican adobe styles
popular in other parts of the Southwest. The town has always had inviting shady paths and streets. In the
distance is a distinctive rise out of the mountains, Thumb Butte, a fify-seven-hundred-foot-high landmark
for generations of travelers.
Levi Bashford, surveyor general, assisted in the design of Prescott’s first courthouse, then on
Cortez Street, in 1867. It had space for the jail, and the second floor sheriff’s office doubled as a
community meeting hall and courtroom.
The two-story pine log governor’s mansion served as both residence and temporary capitol building.
Two principal streets were named for the Aztec monarch Montezuma (who never traveled to the area)
and for the Spanish conquistador Cortez. Other street names also came from history beyond Prescott’s
town limits: Herman de Alarcón, a seafaring explorer; Leroux, a mountaineer and guide; and Doña
Mariña, Cortez’s Mayan lover. The space between Cortez and Montezuma was called The Plaza (public
square). Commerce centered on the Plaza, which had been set aside to accommodate the white granite
Yavapai County Courthouse.
By 1891, Prescott’s population had reached three thousand. It was the center of an extensive mining,
cattle, and agricultural region. Weather was ideal. Land development promotions glorified the fragrance
from the towering pines on the mountainsides. Public schools were considered excellent; there were
churches of five denominations, fraternal organizations, a well-organized fire department, and two daily
newspapers. It was quite a civilized place.
A New England flavor is
unmistakable in these homes along
tree-lined Mt. Vernon Street.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Chapter I ✦ 5

Above: Gurley Street, looking
westward toward Thumb Butte.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Below: Fiorello LaGuardia, then
mayor of New York City, visited his
hometown in 1935. Standing in front
of the old Governor’s House (built in
1864): Violet Jimulla, LaGuardia,
Prescott Mayor Charles Robb, Mrs.
LaGuardia, Yavapai tribal leader Sam
Jimulla, Lucy Jimulla, Grace Sparkes,
and Floyd Williams.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
“The Cob Web Hall” was one of the many
plentiful and varied saloons and considered to
be quite high-class, run by a retired seaman,
Captain Fisher.
The 1900 fire destroyed the Palace Bar on
Whiskey Row. Partners Bob Brow, Ben M.
Belcher, and Barney Smith rebuilt in a grand
manner, complete with a Chinese restaurant and
barbershop. Men came in to check for notices of
available work. It served as election central for
several political races. Cattle spreads and
mineral claims were bought and sold over the
bar. Customers found mustache towels and
brass spittoons for their use. Since the mid-
1870s the Palace has been distinguished as the
oldest frontier saloon in Arizona
Whiskey Row saloons were a tad tamer in later
years. Gambling was legal, although the law
dictated that drinking and dancing were each
dedicated to separate rooms, with the exception of
entertainers. When gambling was made illegal in
1907, women were not allowed in the saloons but
could enter via the family entrance to a back room.
An appearance of prudence was paramount.
Bartenders took care of troublemakers in their
saloons without police help. Some had shotguns
loaded with buckshot, or “bung starters” to hit
offenders over the head.
Men from Prescott, Fort Whipple, and the
surrounding rural areas could enjoy a game of
faro, play roulette wheels, have a nickel beer or a
shot of whiskey, and meet fancy ladies with whom
to share a drink on Whiskey Row. Men would bet
on just about anything: dog fights, cock fights,
and fist fights. The places were hot and filled with
small cigar and hand-rolled cigarette smoke.
Ladies dressed in heavy taffeta and lace.
Telephones in Prescott were first installed at Fort
Whipple. Although invented in 1876, it wasn’t
until 1894 that poles were installed and wires
strung downtown by Wright’s Prescott Electric
Telephone Company. Modern conveniences were
available in Arizona shortly after statehood. On
April 2, 1913, businesses and homes in Prescott
started using electric lights.
The first library was an informal
accumulation of books from the homes of
members of the Women’s Club of Prescott (later
named The Monday Club). In addition, the
citizens paid membership dues to support the
effort. The library ladies dreamed of a free and
attractive public library with a comfortable
6 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

eading room. This was at the time that Andrew
Carnegie encouraged support of libraries
throughout the country. Julia K. Goldwater had
written to Carnegie that many young men had
no recourse to entertainment than the saloons. It
worked. Carnegie offered half the requested sum
with the provision that the community raise a
matching amount. The Prescott Public Library
on a corner of the Plaza was the first Carnegie
library in Arizona. During the 1900 fire, the
library and books were destroyed. Although the
Prescott community declined outside offers of
help in rebuilding the town after the disaster, the
library was an exception, and the community
did accept help in rebuilding.
By 1904 Prescott had an impressive opera
house; an improvement over the previous makedo
structure. The new three-story building
could seat nine hundred. The Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks had a meeting room
upstairs. The auditorium seats were on runners
and could be removed to transform the space
into a ballroom for stylish balls and community
events. During the early 1900s, the theater
hosted singers Madame Schumann-Heink and
Sir Harry Lauder, as well as vaudeville stars from
the Orpheum and Major Bowes Circuits. There
were also local plays and pageants, of course.
Windows of below-street-level shops on
Whiskey Row were later cemented over when the
street level was raised, sidewalks installed, and
streets widened. No one knows the origin of
rumors about tunnels under the business district.
Hearsay related tales of secret passages that ran
from the railroad station to the Chinese section of
town then to the Palace Bar. Some suspicious
folks reasoned they were for smuggling
prostitutes and allowing drunk bar patrons to
board a train. Years later when laborers were
digging foundations for new buildings they
occasionally did discover tunnels; possibly
maintenance crawl spaces for service lines.
During Prohibition bars were moved and hidden
in several passages. Bar business continued as
usual—just relocated underground.
Prescott dealt with Prohibition, declared in
1915, by simply ignoring it. Reasoning was that to
take wine during Communion, to use a medicine
that contained alcohol, to put brandy on mince
pie, or wear perfume with an alcohol base were all
punishable crimes. Why not drink up?
A “statehood tree” was planted on the Plaza
when Arizona was proclaimed a state on 1911.
Several replacement trees have been planted,
but the location is constant. Prescott was the
business and financial center of northern
Arizona and a progressive county seat. Yavapai
County at the time encompassed sixty-five
thousand square miles.
Leroy Anderson once wrote of Prescott, “…no
town can boast of so many true, law-abiding and
intelligent citizens as this progressive city.
Above: Large, skinny tires and a
possible exhaust problem were minor
concerns when an automobile roared
down the street.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Below: The streetcar had a monopoly
on Gurley Street in 1910. There was
very little automobile traffic.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter I ✦ 7

Above: Gurley Street near the
Hassayampa Hotel looking west
toward Thumb Butte.
COURTESY OF PROFESSOR HALL’S CINEMA MUSEUM.
Below: This photograph of the
present-day Whiskey Row shows the
flag still flying atop the Palace Bar,
and the signs for the Bird Cage saloon
and St. Michael’s Hotel.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Educated, ambitious people from the east, north
and south have come here to make their homes.”
In spite of such high praise, a general freewheeling
frontier spirit still endured.
Early automobiles didn’t have enough
horsepower to manage mountain grades, so they
had to zigzag up the steep streets in Prescott.
During the 1914 Desert Classic Rally, Lambert,
Simplex, and Stutz automobiles roared into
Prescott at thirty-five miles an hour. Olin Davis
won first place with Barney Oldfield, the cigarsmoking
world record holder, hot on his trail.
By 1916 it was time for a larger courthouse.
The eight-hundred-pound bell cast in 1878 that
had hung in the previous courthouse was saved.
Originally it was rung to announce fire alarms or
call citizens to assemble Once atop the new
courthouse it was purely decorative, but it now
rings the hours.
During the Depression of the 1930s the
Works Progress Administration provided work
for the unemployed. This made it possible
for people to stay in Prescott, rather than
seek work elsewhere. The WPA workers built
the city ball field and completed a dam across
Banning Creek to form Goldwater Lake. The
dam assured the town a dependable water
supply. Concrete bridges at Aubrey, Grove,
Goodwin, Gurley, and Granite Streets replaced
wooden bridges. The border around the Plaza is
inscribed “W.P.A. 1936,” and the few remaining
concrete streets also are inscribed with the
WPA brand.
It took eight years for Harry Heap, Francis
Viele, and Moses Hazeltine to raise local money
to finally build the Hassayampa Hotel in 1927. It
was centrally located, one block from the Plaza.
The art deco lobby still shows a southwestern
style. It was one of the first quality hotels to cater
to tourists who flocked to Prescott by car and
train. The hotel was a grand success—a tribute
to the adage “Location, location, location.”
In the 1860s, mule packs or wagon trains
brought everything that was needed for life in
Prescott. Newspapers from the East were six
weeks old by the time they reached town. In
1940, Prescott’s radio station KYCA began
broadcasting and brought distant places nearer.
From the moment the station broadcast news of
Pearl Harbor in 1941, it helped the community
organize scrap metals drives, learn defense work,
and assemble volunteers for wartime conditions.
In 1956, Prescott was chosen as the “All-
American City.” Money Magazine tapped it as best
place to retire in 1994. In 2001 it was selected to
host the Michael Feldman National Public Radio
show from the Yavapai College Auditorium.
8 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER II
T HE W HISKEY R OW F IRE
Saloons and gambling halls were filled with miners and cowboys, pianos played, bar girls
and townspeople were having a rip-roaring time. About 10 p.m. on Saturday, July 14, 1900, someone
rang the bell on the Courthouse tower; three pistol shots plus the steam power plant
siren signaled an emergency. A fire had started in a room in the Scopel Hotel at the corner
of Goodwin and Montezuma, south of the Palace. A lighted miner’s candle may have fallen to
the floor and ignited a fire that went out of control. Four fire companies rushed to man the hoses,
but water pressure was too low. They set off dynamite, then called “giant powder,” on the ground
floor to block the blaze. The brick walls remained but the flaming debris ignited wooden buildings
across the street.
The fire quickly hopped across Goodwin Street and proceeded to consume buildings on “Whiskey
Row,” leveling the entire block. Though some buildings were built of brick, many were wood, and
the destruction was nearly complete as the fire burned almost everything in its path. Only a few
buildings still remain of those that escaped the fire.
Whiskey Row saloonkeepers promptly moved gambling equipment and kegs of liquor across
Montezuma Street to the western side of the Plaza before their businesses were completely
demolished. They brought in planks, laid them across barrels to serve as bars, and opened kegs of
liquor. Liquor was served in tin cups. Tradesmen promptly set up business on the Plaza with
merchandise recovered from the fire. Music and entertainment picked up where it had left off. The
owner of the Palace Bar and his patrons set about to save the ornate twelve-foot-long mahogany bar
with the help of cowboys who lassoed it and pulled the bar across the street to the Plaza. The
bartender resumed pouring drinks. Roulette wheels, faro tables, and even a player piano continued
business as usual on the Plaza.
Looking down on how completely
the 1900 Whiskey Row fire leveled
the area. Tents in the foreground
were set up on the Plaza by burnedout
merchants.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter II ✦ 9

Above: The tin front of this pre-1900
building saved it from destruction in
the Whiskey Row Fire of 1900.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Below: Some of the businesses set up
temporary operations from what they
could salvage from the 1900 Whiskey
Row fire and continued to conduct
business on the Plaza. The burnedout
buildings on the opposite side of
the street were grim reminders of
recent events.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM
Some buildings did escape the fire, but few
carried insurance. The Burke Hotel, at the
corner of Montezuma and Gurley, was destroyed
and was rebuilt in a Second Renaissance Revival
design and renamed the Hotel St. Michael. The
fire essentially wiped out Montezuma, Gurley,
and North Cortez Streets. All meat markets,
green groceries, five hotels, tobacco stands, 25
saloons, major dry goods stores, jewelry shops,
and all the bawdyhouses were destroyed. Gone,
too, were five barbershops and 60 homes.
Estimated losses were close to $2 million.
Luckily, Wright’s Prescott Electric Telephone
Company survived the 1900 fire. The Bank of
Arizona had not been so fortunate. The safe was
salvaged, and the staff did business from the phone
company office with a guard posted outside of the
building. Alas, the safe was too large to fit through
the door, so it was placed on the sidewalk. Local
people accepted this arrangement, but the bank’s
New York insurance company refused to insure a
safe on a sidewalk, guarded or not.
The local Howler newspaper described the
ravages of the fire: “Two thirds of our pretty little
town and all but three or four of the business
houses were wiped out by Saturday night’s fire;
but our people are brave and cheerful withal,
and instead of whines and groans, there is the
merry sound of hammer and saw as a temporary
town rises rapidly on the Plaza.”
Three and a half blocks of the business portion
of the city were destroyed in about five hours.
The water system consisted of one well and a
cement-lined reservoir at the top of Pleasant Street.
The pumping plant had just been overhauled, and
the engine had not been reconnected to the pump.
The reservoir was almost empty.
By 3 a.m. firefighters and volunteers had the
fire under control before it reached the Santa Fe,
Prescott, and Phoenix Railroad yards on
Sheldon Street Electric light poles and wires had
been destroyed; the town was in total darkness.
Most of historic downtown Prescott was rebuilt
by the end of 1902. The masonry, brick, and stone
buildings gave Prescott a new, secure look.
Other Whiskey Row fires on January 5,
1883, and July 14, 1890, had caused some
damage, but the 1900 fire was by far the worst.
Every time Whiskey Row burned down, it was
rebuilt. It just continued to persevere.
10 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER III
B UCKEY O’NEILL, ROUGH R IDER
Just before Abraham Lincoln signed the statute creating the Territory of Arizona William Owen
(Buckey) O’Neill reached Prescott, responding to Governor John Charles Fremont’s promotions.
There were rich mining properties and a population of five thousand prospectors and speculators.
O’Neill was quickly nicknamed “Buckey” for his faro gambling style of bucking the tiger (a design on
the back of faro cards) in gambling. An early visitor said, “Prescott is a saloon town and a whiskey
town. It is also a faro town and a craps town.” That suited O’Neill just fine.
He married the daughter of a Fort Whipple Army captain, and the couple later adopted a fouryear-old
boy, Maurice. O’Neill worked at the Arizona Miner newspaper. By 1884 there were 625,000
head of cattle in the territory—and lots of cattlemen. Buckey saw a slot for a journal exclusively for
those rancher/businessmen—he founded Hoof & Horn.
Early Prescott justice made for exciting news reporting. One particularly loathsome thief and
murderer experienced swift-moving frontier justice. It took only forty-seven days to convict and
sentence him to hang after he murdered a deputy sheriff. The convicted murderer, his hands tied
behind his back, rode to the gallows in the back of the buckboard sitting atop his coffin.
Buckey O’Neill (center) was a
valued customer at the Bank of
Arizona in 1891.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter III ✦ 11

Right: Buckey O’Neill was the first
volunteer to offer his services in the
Spanish-American War.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Bottom, left: Before departing for
action in the Spanish-American War,
the Rough Riders engaged in
maneuvers on the residential
Mt. Vernon Street in Prescott.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Bottom, right: The Buckey O’Neill
statue in the Plaza.
COURTESY OF THE
PRESCOTT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
During his sixteen years in Prescott, O’Neill
worked as a court reporter, editor/publisher,
was elected Yavapai County probate judge,
school superintendent, county sheriff and tax
assessor (all one job), and mayor. Sheriff was
not a salaried position; he was solely dependent
on legal fees and reimbursement of mileage
and expenses. As sheriff and tax assessor,
O’Neill promised to tax the full value of the
Atlantic and Pacific Railroad’s land holdings
despite the governor’s plan to exempt new
railroads from taxation.
O’Neill had no real campaign issue when he
ran for public office. His appeal was “let-mehave-a-go-at-it.”
He believed in this country and
quoted Henry George, economist and
philosopher: “Thirty years ago the land on
which Prescott stands was bought for $200 and
today it is rated at a million.”
Buckey O’Neill smoked hand-rolled cigarettes,
but never carried matches. Everyone around
town obliged his request of, “Gimme a match.”
Buckey knew there was more to mining than
digging and panning. There was buying and
selling the mine. Buckey bought a one-third
interest in an onyx mine in nearby Mayer for
$150; it later sold for $200,000. With a
grubstake gained from the sale, Buckey
promoted a railroad to the Grand Canyon and
copper mines under its rim.
Prescott Mayor O’Neill was the first volunteer
in the entire United States to offer his services in
the Spanish-American War. He led a contingent
of eighty local volunteers to fight in Teddy
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders.
On July 1, 1898, while Buckey was talking with
an officer near Kettle Hill, an enemy bullet killed
him. He was buried on the Cuban battlefield, and,
in 1899, his remains were returned for interment
at Arlington National Cemetery.
“Who would not risk his life for a star?” Buckey
once said. The “star” was not the star of a brigadier
general. He probably was thinking, “Who would
not gamble for a new a star representing Arizona
to be added to the U.S. flag.”
12 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER IV
A GIANT C OUNTY - YAVAPAI
The estimated 180,250 people who live in Yavapai County could travel the county’s 8,091
square miles (approximate area of New Jersey) for days and probably not bump into each other.
Historic Prescott takes up a substantial part of that space as the county seat. There are, however,
many worthy communities:
• Arcosanti, near Cordes Junction, is a futuristic community planned by artist Paolo Soleri.
Designed within the complex are apartments, businesses, production areas, technology, and open
space, as well as educational and cultural events. It is to expand into a larger structure with
extensive solar greenhouses on 25 acres of the 4,060-acre land preserve.
• Cottonwood/Clarkdale is nestled between Jerome and Sedona in Verde Valley. The agricultural
region still has descendants of men who worked for the Douglas mining operation in Jerome.
• Once called “Valle de China,” Chino Valley was home of an Arizona military post. Fort Whipple briefly
set up near Del Rio Springs, around December 1863, then moved to Prescott five months later.
Cacti sharing growing space
with primroses.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Chapter IV ✦ 13

• Jerome’s copper mines were once the nation’s
richest. It ranked as a boomtown in late
1800s, built on a steep mountainside. The
Depression, tunnel fires, and labor disputes
shut down operations. Now it is an artists’
colony on a sharp-sloping perch.
• Kingman was founded in 1882 as a railroad
town. It became popular on Historic Route
66, which was built between 1926 and 1938.
A five-square-mile military gunnery base and
storage depot were installed, and forty-eight
thousand men trained there during World
War II.
• Big Bug Station was a stop for the Black
Canyon Stage when it was established in 1877.
The town’s name was later changed to Mayer.
• One of the younger communities is Prescott
Valley, founded in 1966 and incorporated in
1978. The town has grown commercially and
has attracted many residents.
• Brilliant red rocks make Sedona glow. John
James Thompson was the first white settler in
the area in 1876. Theodore Schnebly named
the postal station after his wife, Sedona.
• Yarnell, a town of a little more than a thousand
people, is peppered with house-size boulders.
It is named after Harrison Yarnell, who found
gold in the area. Now it’s slogan is “Where
Desert Breeze Meets Mountain Air.”
Early settlers’ tradition of courage, imagination,
and determination are deeply stamped in this
splendid Arizona county—Yavapai.
Above: The juniper survives growing
out of rock and many years of winds.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Right: Winter snow dusts the clouds
and mountains in Yavapai County.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
14 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER V
L IFE OF P RESCOTT B USINESS
The town began to make headway when real estate developers started selling lots. It was full steam
ahead after 75 lots were sold for a total of $3,927 in June 1864.
Richard Cunningham McCormick brought in the first printing press and in March 1864 in Chino
Valley established the Arizona Miner… known as the “official” newspaper of the Territory, ready to
deliver news and run advertising.
John Huguenot Marion, once on the Arizona Miner staff, launched the Prescott Morning Courier in
1881. This paper was printed in a second story room of the courthouse with a clear view of legal
hangings in the yard below, an assurance of accurate crime reporting. Colonel E. A. Rogers took over
the editor’s role upon Marion’s death in 1891. The Courier moved into offices with electric lights and
telephone service, and the “Old Ironsides” press was fitted with an electric motor. The paper became
The Evening Courier in 1920 and affiliated with the Daily Journal-Miner in 1936. At that time Prescott
became a one-paper town.
Mining was an investment game as well as an opportunity for hard-bitten miners. Many
companies sold stock in mines where not one ounce of gold had been extracted. Two million dollars
worth of gold actually was mined each year during the Granite Creek area rush in mid-1800s.
Some shifty-eyed dealers sold Prescott investors impressive ancient-looking Spanish documents as
land grants. These “strangers getting off the Santa Fe” spoke eloquently and presented extraordinary
deals that had a tendency to go sour. There were a few sudden deaths involved in those negotiations.
James I. Gardner came to Arizona on a burro pack train in 1879, and within four years opened an
emporium. In 1890 he completed his own building on the northeast corner of Willis and Cortez Streets.
These four ladies had highly regarded
jobs operating the phone company
switchboard in 1911.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter V ✦ 15

The 1878 Goldwater Mercantile was
the epitome of fine department store
shopping in spite of Prescott’s
unpaved streets.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Gardner’s store supplied cowmen and their
families with goods—from coffee to canned foods
to horseshoes to underwear to household
furnishings, and everything in between. Gardner
had the inventory as well as business savvy. It was
the southwest’s oldest general mercantile store in
continuous use until 1984, when it transfigured
to Murphy’s Restaurant.
Gardner extended credit to cowmen during
bad years, low cattle prices or personal
misfortune. When they sold their steers they
paid their bills. A few merchants still granted
similar credit through the 1940s. A little sixyear-old
had a bona fide charge account at a
downtown luncheonette to charge his afternoon
snack. His working mother paid the bill each
week, assured that her son would have a
sandwich. That little kid grew up to become
Prescott’s two-time mayor, Daiton Rudkowski.
In pioneer times customers came to town
perhaps once a month. If they lived near the
railroad, they sent orders by mail so merchants
could ship goods to way stations along the
railroad. Many paid in gold dust or nuggets.
Some merchants and saloons in town accepted
livestock, fresh produce, or just about anything
of value in barter.
Before the railroad came to Prescott in
December 1886, local merchants received goods
that came by boat from Los Angeles or San
Francisco around Lower California then up the
Colorado River to Ehrenberg onward to Prescott.
Supplies from the East Coast had to be shipped
around the tip of South America to either the
mouth of the Colorado River or to San Francisco.
By 1887, Prescott’s population was almost
2,000, and the town had 14 mercantile stores. You
could patronize any of the three jewelers, three
meat markets, four livery stables, three breweries,
eight carpenter shops, eight blacksmith shops,
seven wagon shops, five hotel/restaurants, five
boot shops, 14 saloons, two barber shops, seven
attorneys, four physicians, one drug store, a
dentist, a harness shop, a photographer, three
assay offices, and a door factory. The town
continued to grow. Between 1890 and 1910 the
population jumped to 5,000.
Prices tended to be higher in the West than in
the rest of the country. In 1863, Prescott marked
flour at $25 a hundredweight, coffee was $12 a
pound, sugar was 75¢ a pound, seed corn was $22
per hundred pounds, and barley or wheat seed
went for $20. In 1868 you could build a house for
about $405. Every scrap of hardware was precious;
people wisely saved nails from dry goods boxes. By
the early 1900s land sold at $10 an acre. Many
prices were out of sight—calico cloth cost 7¢ a
yard in the East but 60 to 70¢ in Arizona.
Goldwater is a valued name around town.
Morris Goldwater promoted the Prescott and
Arizona Central Railroad. He was a founder of
the Prescott National Bank and instrumental in
organizing the Arizona National Guard. He was
a member of three state legislatures, served as
mayor of Prescott, without pay, for 22 years, and
lived in Prescott for 63 years. Goldwater
arranged the first street paving in town. The
Goldwater stores advertised “The Best Always.”
They installed the first elevator and introduced
a pneumatic tube system for cash transactions.
In 1964, Morris was named “Man of the
Century” at Prescott’s centennial celebration.
When there were industrial troubles in the East,
they translated into strikes and tight money out
West. The Bullion Theory, which stated that money
could be issued only in amounts secured by either
gold or silver retained in vaults, affected business.
After much haggling, the Bland-Allison Act was
pushed through Congress in 1878, requiring the
U.S. Government to purchase not less than $2
million in silver per month to be coined into
dollars. A new silver mining rush was on.
Records from 1900 claim that eighty-five
percent of Arizona’s population lived in rural
areas. Ninety years later, eighty-seven percent
lived in towns. Many rural logging and farming
16 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

towns ripened into tourist resorts. Prescott’s
clean, cool air attracted tourists early on,
making tourism a driving industry.
In addition to the services provided, the red
light district supported standard retail commerce.
A downtown merchant might send an errand boy
to deliver a garment to a prostitute. If she could
not pay for the merchandise, the madam would
approve the bill and the bartender would pay it.
Shortly after moving to Prescott, Job Moore
bought an interest in the Arizona Ore Company, a
business that sampled ore, did assay work, bought
ore from small mines, and shipped it to smelters
for processing. Moore formed a partnership with
Frank Wright to build an electric generating plant
near Fort Whipple. Moore raised the finances,
while Wright built the plant. Prescott could finally
switch on electric lights.
The first commercial farm grew grain in the
Miller Valley area, originally called Spring Valley.
Sam and Jacob Leroy Miller homesteaded and
set up a crude mill to grind grain that put bread
on Prescott tables.
In 1880 the booming cattle business
attracted judicious investors from Scotland and
England to the ranchland. They followed a basic
formula: once the mother cows were purchased
and bred, they would produce calves which
could be sold a year later at a handsome profit.
Cattle ranching thrived.
The area west of the Gurley Street Bridge was
once the business center of town. There were
some false-fronted two-story frame buildings. A
façade was built up so the gable roof did not
show from the street. Most businesses operated
on the first floor and the owners lived upstairs. A
walk led around to outside stairs in the rear.
That’s where garbage and trash were collected
once a week by a “scavenger service” consisting
of a man with a huge two-wheeled dump cart
pulled by a mule. The mule knew every stop as
it progressed up an alley, even if the driver didn’t.
A barrel of pure distilled corn whiskey always
on tap attracted customers to Michael Wormser’s
adobe store near Lynx Creek. In town, the Cal
Jackson & Company saloon sold “very good old
rye” at $6.50 per gallon and champagne on tap;
accomplished by use of a device that allowed a
small amount of liquid to be poured from a
carbonated beverage bottle, while the balance of
the liquid in the bottle maintained pressure.
Calvin Jackson came west in 1857 as an
employee of the Butterfield Stage Company. His
story is not unusual; he carried the mail on
horseback, worked as a guide for the California
Volunteer Army, mined, and finally made his
fortune in the saloon business.
Today’s Bashford Court boutiques and specialty
shops on Gurley Street began as Levi Bashford’s
New Store, later called New York Cheap Store that
sold rifles, cooking stoves, and groceries. They
claimed that merchandise came directly from New
York City, saving enormous tariff levied by San
Francisco wholesalers thus enabling Bashford to
sell cheaper than other local merchants. A shrewd
marketer, he was the first to display goods outside
in front of his store. Bashford owned most of the
Gurley Street property facing the Plaza, including
the original log building that had been the
territorial legislature. “Cheap John’s Store” was
Long Wah Co., with the false front
popular with Western retailers, was
one of the many successful Chineserun
businesses in town.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter V ✦ 17

A rustic “underground” saloon that
held President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt in high regard. Now a
commercial laundry occupies the
ground-level building.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
nothing like today’s “dollar” stores. Then “cheap”
meant inexpensive but of good quality—a
confirmed bargain. Another was Kerr’s Cheap
Store on the north side of the Plaza, offering
“...anything else needed by you for less money
than the same can be bought from anywhere else
in town.” Advertising was evolving.
By 1868, Postmaster George Barnard had
been a saddle and harness maker, librarian of
the Arizona Pioneer and Historical Society,
dance instructor, and justice of the peace. Alas,
he was dismissed for being short some
$3,500, according to postal records. The Post
Office moved from one location to another and
shared space in different stores. This was
standard procedure in small towns at the time.
William J. Berry ran the Sportsman’s
Emporium, selling guns, files, and pistols.
Outside, a sign in the shape of a gun announced
the merchandise specialty. Berry also had his
law office in the building. Most likely a profitable
combination.
From the south side of Goodwin Street to
Cortez was James D. Monihon’s Plaza Feed and
Livery Stable offering product that “…cures sick
and dejected horses. Diseased or wounded
animals carefully and skillfully treated.” The
business did not flourish, but Monihon did
become mayor of Phoenix in 1896.
People were weary of a limited diet of venison.
Beans, bacon, sugar, flour, eggs, and vegetables
were scarce. Luckily many miners had been
farmers before coming to Arizona. They
answered merchants’ demand for vittles by
pumping water from creeks to grow cabbage,
melons, and corn. Nearby Skull Valley, Willow
Creek, Walnut Grove, and Williamson Valley
eventually all became farming country.
Agribusiness took hold.
Ten-mule supply trains usually had a layover
in La Paz on the way to Prescott, banding
together to form a caravan for greater security
against marauding Indians and highwaymen.
Some large Prescott stores had their own freight
teams; one had a 50-animal train with 27 men
and the protection of ten soldiers.
Freight costs from San Francisco to Prescott in
1868 were 16¢ (in gold) per pound, which, in turn,
expanded retail prices. Bacon averaged 34¢ per
pound, butter $1.50, and eggs $1.50 per dozen.
A lenient legal structure allowed private lots
and buildings on the Plaza. Eventually a public
hearing restored the Plaza to public use, exclusively,
protected from commerce. In 1877 a white
fence surrounded the Plaza, and the handsome
courthouse was completed in the center.
The economy had always been tight outside
town. A ranchhand made about $20 a month plus
rustic room and board in the 1930s.
Unemployment was rising throughout the
United States in 1932, and Prescott felt the
Depression intensely. The WPA (Works Progress
Administration) government program provided
work rather than welfare, through conservation
projects, road construction, schools, and public
buildings such as the Smoki Museum. Workers
were able to stay in Prescott rather than search for
work in other cities.
Moonshiners helped keep the economy afloat
during Prohibition. Home-based whiskey making
was the only source of income for some families in
the 1930s. The sheriff would respond to closedminded
public opinion by pouring the contents of
a still onto the ground. Nonetheless, under-thecounter
sales of home brew flourished along
Whiskey Row.
By 1944 the main entertainment center in
town was the Elks Theater and Opera House. The
Groom Creek Drive-In drew the bring-your-ownpopcorn
crowd. There was no fast food in town
and just a few restaurants. For special occasions,
people dined at the Hassayampa Inn, Hotel St.
Michael, the Plaza, Green Frog, Pine Cone Inn,
Dinner Bell, or the Ranch House. There was very
little ethnic food other than a Chinese eatery.
Vibrant, clean mountain air has always fortified
hearty appetites.
18 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER VI
P RESCOTT’ S C HINESE H ISTORY
Chinese pioneers came to Prescott after the Central Pacific Railroad was completed in the 1860s.
In 1869 the stock market was based on the gold standard. California droughts and bad economy
drove the Chinese out of California. They established groceries, laundries, and a joss house (shrine
or temple) along Goodwin and Granite Streets. Some became produce farmers, miners, cooks in
saloons and restaurants, domestic servants, or laundry owners, and one became a faro dealer.
Around 1852 many Chinese traveled from China to Mexico, then on overland trails from the
Mexican interior to Sonora-Arizona border. There were 75 Chinese in Prescott by the end of 1870,
and by 1900 the Oriental population was 229. In 1869, early immigrants were the target of journalistic
bias: “Three more Chinamen arrived here during the week and have gone to work. There are now
four them of them, which is quite enough.”
More than twenty of the Chinese immigrants worked in the Vulture Mining Works
near Wickenburg. A Miner article remarked that they comprised most of the work force. Other Chinese
prospectors reworked old eighteenth century Spanish claims using techniques to extract gold they had
learned earlier in California. They understood the speculative nature of this type of mining. Arizona law
specified that miners who were not native-born citizens of the United States were required to pay a
A Chinese laundry and joss house—a
meeting place containing a shrine and
images of Chinese deities.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter VI ✦ 19

A young Chinese girl in traditional
elaborate finery. Note the distinctive
artwork that she is displaying.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
license fee of $20 a month. Many Chinese
miners, either unwilling or unable to pay the tax,
went into other lines of work. In spite of the
disfavor they often met, as more Chinese moved
into town, they found jobs there or set up
businesses along Goodwin and Granite Streets.
Artifacts dug up during the 2002 parking
garage excavation on Granite Street unearthed
opium pipes, teacups, and soy pots. George Ah
Fat ran local advertisements for his laundry in the
Daily Arizona Miner in the 1870s. The Chineseowned
American Laundry was located at the
present Seitz Office City location on North
Montezuma Street. Prescott’s Chinese population
was a source of intermixed services.
Traditional Chinese rituals were often reenacted
in the joss house, especially observances
of ancestral worship during the New Year
celebration. Particular forms of dress, food,
fruits, and flowers held symbolic significance for
an Asian and were believed to have power to
overcome evil. Some historians claim that the
men’s queue (braid) was a symbol of allegiance
to the Ch’ing dynastic rule of the Manchurians,
who dominated China from 1644 to 1811. The
bound feet of Chinese women implied that a
woman’s position was exclusively in her home.
White narcissus flowers were thought to bring
good fortune, and peach blossoms brought long
life. Arizona shopkeepers frequently gave their
best customers flower bulbs during celebrations
of Chinese holidays.
Because of restrictive immigration law, the
primary bond between Chinese did not usually
extend beyond father-son, uncle-nephew, or
brother-to-brother links. Often, the few Chinese
women in the territory had joined husbands
who had immigrated earlier. In 1871, the first
Chinese woman arrived in Prescott. Even within
all-male groups, however, the function of
kinship was vital in the maintenance of culture
and in introducing immigrants to new
geographical territories. Although most Chinese
bachelors remained single, some did marry
women of other races. A 1901 Arizona law
prohibited Chinese from marrying Anglos,
stating “the marriage of a person of Caucasian
blood with a Negro or Oriental is null and void.”
Marriage between Chinese and Mexicans was
accepted, as were alliances with members of
other minority groups.
A great problem for the Chinese community
was to be apart from, yet part of, the larger
society. Culturally distinguishable from
Mexican, Indian, Negro, and Anglo in the plural
society of the Southwest, the Chinese soon
learned to make themselves understood in
English as well as in Spanish. Christian mission
schools helped. One of first schools was
established in 1880 by T. W. Otis, a pioneer
merchant and one of the founders of the
Presbyterian and Congregational churches in
Prescott. He organized classes for English using
the Bible and the hymnal as texts. In 1895 his
ten Chinese students held a special service
conducted entirely in English, singing hymns
and reciting passages from the New Testament.
Children began to lose their native culture. To
the distress of their parents and grandparents,
second- and third-generation children grew up
unable to speak Chinese.
Some families could afford to send their
children to China for instruction, thus
reestablishing family ties and maintaining an
ethnic identity for the Arizona-born Orientals.
However, Americanization was burgeoning.
Several Arizona Chinese men were drafted into
service during wartime. Throughout the state, they
joined the general population in the celebration of
Cinco de Mayo and the Fourth of July holidays.
Chinese family relationships were not
understood by white settlers and became the basis
for discriminatory legislation. Marriage dispelled
the distrust and suspicion of the single men who
were thought to be in this country temporarily
only to take advantage of its opportunities and
wealth, then return to China.
In 1892, Granite Creek overran its banks and
flooded Chinatown. In the same year opposition
to immigration of Chinese peaked in the United
States with the passage of the Geary Act, which
banned new immigration from China and
re-entry of former residents. The 1900 fire
destroyed some Chinese-owned businesses and
places of employment. In 1907, gambling was
declared illegal in Arizona Territory, putting
another dent in their employment. In 1914,
Prohibition closed saloons, and the 1929
Depression closed many laundries and
groceries. The door to opportunity in Prescott
was closing for even the most enterprising
Chinese inhabitants.
20 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER VII
H OME ON THE R ANCHLAND
Not all men who came to Prescott sought gold. Years of blazing sun and wind and storms had
made some grow old at the business of searching for new ranges. Cattlemen were often veterans of
trail drives from Texas to Kansas. The United States was the most thriving agricultural country in the
world, and farming and ranching were honorable ventures, albeit strenuous ones. New arrivals often
looked for new fields to till. Prescott agriculture initially had only one producing farm of any size;
that was the King Woolsey’s ranch, twenty-five miles east of town. Kentucky-born James M. Swetnam
organized a group of young farmers and headed for Verde Valley and its steadily flowing river. They
dug irrigation canals, built corrals, and established permanent and productive farms.
Fashion finery was dismissed. Older men wore blue overalls with the Levi Strauss brand on
the waistband. During the 1849 California gold rush, miners first selected Levis because the dense
fabric withstood punctures. Men sported wide-brimmed Stetsons or a string under the chin secured
high, square-crowned hats, relics of the Spaniards. They all wore high-heeled cowboy boots with the
big roweled spurs introduced by the conquistadors and sometimes a bandanna or silk handkerchief
knotted around the neck. The well-dressed, but minimally-stocked rancher was hailed “All hat and
no cattle.”
Usually there was a well-filled cartridge belt and a heavy, long barreled Colt .45 six-shooter,
though some carried Winchester carbines slung on the saddle. The revolver was the weapon of choice
for quick work. A man who wore his gun on the left side was branded as a tenderfoot. One sheriff
defiantly wore his long-barreled Colt on the left side with the butt turned forward in disregard of
local tradition. However, this sheriff was a dead shot.
Cattle on a ranch in Yavapai County.
A ranchhand milks a cow the oldfashioned
way.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter VII ✦ 21

Above: An iron wind turbine that
pumped water for a local ranch
in 1885.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Below: A spread of cattle on the range
under the administration of cowboys.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Any cowboy “riding the chuck line” was out
of work and going from ranch to ranch or from
one cow camp to another and living off the
proprietors. He usually did just enough work to
pay for his board. Young cowboys were full of
the devil and ready for any lark that promised
excitement. Most boasted they could ride
anything that “wore hair.” Some had stepped
beyond the law in other places, becoming killers,
rustlers—crafty, cruel, and often dangerous men.
Arizona is big country. There are still miners
and cattle ranchers and loggers at work in the
lonely places. Their talk and tales go on. The late
Lester Ward (Budge) Ruffner of Prescott was one
of those storytellers. Arizona-born, Budge spent
his boyhood years on Arizona cattle ranches and
Indian reservations, where he collected and
recorded the lore of the country people he loved.
He wrote a column signed “Budge” which ran for
years in the Prescott Courier.
The Taylor Grazing Act was passed in 1934.
Before that time there was open free grazing for
livestock; no fee, no fences, and no supervision.
The Department of the Interior hadn’t been
concerned in the years before the Depression.
Everyone owned some cattle and horses and
turned them out to graze wherever there was
grass. The result was severely overgrazed public
lands that suffered erosion.
Ranch families were close-knit, but many
ranchers would admit that they remembered more
about their favorite horse than most men
remember about their wives. Ranch work started
early in a boy’s life. One lifelong cowboy reminisced
about becoming an orphan at six and being
adopted by a ranch family. He developed into a
ranchhand early on and learned how to break
horses. Could be he was an early “Horse Talker.”
There’s an elegant art in naming the ranch.
Ranches like 2 Shoes, Bar Cross, Y4, Cross U,
Yolo, Dumbbell, Tailholt, Diamond 2, and Bar O
all lend themselves to a brand design, too.
Many men found it hard to support a family
on cowboy wages and went into construction
or jobs operating heavy equipment or doing
road repair. Love of the cowboy lifestyle was
and still is hard to forget. Eventually, possibly
after their children grew up, many returned to
the ranch. As late as the 1920s, ranchers used
their Model-T pick up trucks to chase down
strays if there weren’t enough cowboys around.
A few early ranchers leased land from
some of the Indian tribes. Ranches often ran
over ten thousand head of cattle. Cattle drives
gave cattle an opportunity to winter in
Arizona and spend their summers in Wyoming
before cowboys drove them to market for
slaughter in October.
22 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Successful ranching requires a solid herd of
sturdy, producing cattle. Cows are bred to have
their calves between February and April. Steer
calves are sold in the fall, and heifer calves are
held over and bred the following spring.
In the early 1900s horses were not saddled
until they were three or four years old. They ran
wild and their contact with humans came only
when it was branding and castrating time for
colts. This did not establish a close bond
between man and equine.
Ranch kids were frequently schooled at
home. Others trekked to schools that may have
been a bit pungent. Home medicine was often a
twenty-four-hour treatment. Added to the
scholastic aroma were the boys who had trap
lines and may have skinned a skunk before
coming to school.
Food was harvested according to the season.
Vegetables and fruit would be eaten fresh, with
some stored away for winters. Indians gathered
acorns in August, shelled the nuts, dried and
ground them into powder, to eat or to use as
seasoning for meats and soups. Saguaro cactus
fruit was gathered in July. The sweet fresh juice
was drunk or dried as a concentrate for winter
use. Mescal, a small spineless cactus, was
gathered, and the sugar was used for bread.
Deer and antelope provided protein and their
hides were tanned and used to make clothes and
moccasins by both Indians and Whites.
Beef and deer jerky was made by slicing raw
meat very thin, sprinkling it with salt and
pepper, and drying it in the sun. In the days
before refrigeration, when beef was butchered
during warm weather, it was difficult to use all
the meat before it spoiled. A quarter or even half
of the beef was made into jerky to preserve it. It
was usually eaten dry but could be incorporated
into cooked dishes. Shredded jerky heated in
gravy and served over a biscuit made a lifesustaining
breakfast. Cowboys would stash a
few pieces in a jacket pocket before going out
to work. A piece every hour or so could
keep hunger away and satisfy the desire to chew.
Jerky strips hanging outside to dry would
usually take a week or so to dehydrate.
Unfortunately, there was no way to keep flies
away. Cowboys joked about how much of the
coating was pepper and how much fly specks.
Another challenge was a method of water
conservation during dry spells, when pioneers
didn’t always wash dishes after each meal.
Mountain wildlife includes plants exclusive
to the area, like the chaparral plant community,
dwarf evergreen, shrub live oak, and Quercus
turbinella. It’s unclear if the javelina (peccary),
newcomers to the area, were imported in
the 1960s from the desert for sport hunting
or if they decided to migrate away from urban
sprawl. These pig-like animals are usually
nocturnal, nasty, and not at all handsome.
Most wild animals such as mountain lions,
squirrels, and mule deer are direct descendants
of old time stock. They were the authentic
early settlers, although labeled “intruders”
many times.
Above: Cattle brands listed with First
Interstate Bank between 1877
and 1894.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Below: A reenactment of redheaded
Bill Williams Mountain Men
Rendezvous Ride.
PHOTO BY LES STUKENBERG.
COURTESY OF THE DAILY COURIER.
Chapter VII ✦ 23

CHAPTER VIII
I NDIAN W AY OF C HANGE
The Smoki People, a Prescott
organization founded to perpetuate
American Indian ceremonies and
dances, performing a Hopi dance.
PHOTO BY BRIAN MCCALL.
COURTESY OF THE SMOKI MUSEUM.
Don’t you think that the Paleo-Indians who roamed this land more than ten thousand years ago
would have wondered why it took so long for Arizona to formally record its history? It was not until
the arrival of the Spanish in the 1400s that legends of cities of gold began to stimulate European
exploration. Juan de Oñate, a New Mexico colonizer, investigated the Arizona Hopi mesas and
explored the rich mines near Jerome. He also sent a small expedition to investigate Prescott regions,
where they found a little silver ore, but they ultimately withdrew.
In October 1775, Colonel Juan Bautista de Anza made an expedition through the Southwest and
identified Yavipai (Yavapai) Indians. The name was derived from enyaeva meaning “sun,” and pai
meaning “people.” Thus, the Yavapai are the “People of the Sun.”
The story goes that the Yavapai came from the underground world by climbing through a large hole
made by a large pine tree with vines hanging from the tree down into the hole. They used the vine to
pull themselves to the surface. The non-militant, sedentary, and agriculturally inclined Prescott Indians
found good reason to settle. The lush undergrowth and grasses on mountain slopes, prior to the
drought of the 1200s, were a hunter’s and food gatherer’s paradise. Indian people developed farming
implements as they refined their agricultural work. A study of the rise and decline of the Prescott
Indians before their migration to other lands indicates that they developed crafts and elaborate
ceremonial life between 1225 and 1280. A later drought seems to have diminished use of their skills.
Dwellings were constructed haphazardly, and the use of tools and observation of ceremonies declined.
Early Prescott people retained their identity and cultural characteristics in spite of theories that
they were influenced by Sinagua, Anasazi, and Hohokam Indians. Yavapais had been associated with
the Apaches because White men had difficulty in distinguishing between the tribes. Yavapai men
wore their hair long, below the shoulders. Apache men usually wore their hair shoulder length with
bangs across the forehead and a cloth headband. Yavapais are branch of the Yuman group, and the
Apaches are of the Athabascan group. Efforts by the military to relocate Apache mistakenly gathered
Yavapai into the uprooting. By 1875 most Prescott Indians were sent to the Rio Verde Reservation
and from there marched to the San Carlos Apache Reservation. A few Yavapai managed to escape and
returned to Prescott, where they settled near Fort Whipple. That was the beginning of the Prescott-
Yavapai tribe. In the 1900s, eight families from San Carlos retuned to Prescott. Historians estimate
24 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

that the entire tribe had been reduced to less
than six hundred members.
Archeological studies helped to decipher the
early Yavapai way of life. The Arizona State
Museum and Yavapai County Chamber of
Commerce began excavation during the summer
of 1932. They located 55 graves with 66
individuals interred. Based on pottery types found,
occupation may have begun as early as 900 A.D.
and extended into 1200s.
Indications of pithouses that preceded the
pueblo occupancy were found. Near Dewey, south
of Prescott, the Oxley Ruin was excavated in
1974. A three-room masonry walled structure and
one two-room structure stood on a small plateau.
The King’s Ruins, 35 miles northwest of
Prescott, on the edge of a riverbed terrace, had
13 rooms. Twelve of these were in a possible
two-story pueblo, with one oval pithouse found
in the nearby burial area.
A series of studies of the Prescott culture
began in 1966 twenty-five miles north of
Prescott, in Williamson Valley. Complexes of
five units was located within four miles of each
other. Each complex probably occupied by the
same family.
The Arizona Archaeological Society began
work on the Storm site, on a steep hill near
Sundog Ranch. The structures were built of
oblong stones laid in an overlapping running
bond, so well matched that only a thin layer of
mortar was needed to bind them.
Prescott College worked on the Sundown Site,
in Williamson Valley from 1981 to 1985. Their
research centered on a large mound, approximately
65 feet in diameter that functioned as a
burial center from which 27 burials were exhumed.
Bodies were laid in an extended position,
on their backs, with heads usually facing the east.
A few graves contained two or more burials.
A single unit pithouse was built of light poles
set vertically into clay around the floor
perimeter. They were covered with brush and
roofed over with poles, more brush and finally
plastered with mud. Pithouses were laid out
with major measurement in a north/south
direction. Shallow floors were cut into the
ground surface. Most pithouse rooms contained
a firepit as well as storage pit. If there were wall
entrances, they usually were on the east wall
with either a ramp or some type of sill with
a step. Roof entrances were more common.
When the Yavapai built their homes of poles and
brush, they called them uwas, consisting of a
framework of poles set in the ground in a circle
and lashed together, forming a dome. The sides
were covered with brush and the entire
structure thatched with grass, as with pithouses
From 600 A.D. through 1300 A.D. there was
little change in Prescott pottery design. Prescott
pottery style is called Gray Ware, and the insides
of bowls are decorated. Many artifacts obtained
from archeological digs in the 1930s are on
display at Smoki Museum.
It seems that there was trade between
Southwest Indian tribes and other natives on the
northern frontier before the arrival of the
Spaniards. Azurite and malachite were probably
brought to the Prescott area by trade from Jerome
or Bagdad copper mine areas. Once Spanish
governors were on the scene, they attempted to
regulate and control the trade in captives, hides,
blankets, corn, and horses to realize a profit.
One can imagine Indians sitting on a
boulder, watching early pioneers crossing the
country. They may have contemplated trade
with White men, since they didn’t appear to do
any harm; apart from reducing the grazing and
thinning the game a little. The Indian just had to
ride a few miles to be in clear country, where the
White men had not yet reached. There was still
plenty for everyone. That changed as more and
more settlers claimed land.
Above: A Native American woman
cooking over an open flame.
COURTESY OF THE SMOKI MUSEUM,
TAYLOR HICKS COLLECTION.
Below: Barry Goldwater, on the right,
wearing Indian silver ornaments
exchanges thoughts with a Native
American friend.
COURTESY OF THE SMOKI MUSEUM.
Chapter VIII ✦ 25

Above: Viola Jimulla was the tribal
head of the Prescott Yavapai Tribe
from 1940 to 1966.
COURTESY OF THE SMOKI MUSEUM.
Top, right: A replica of a kiva at
Smoki Museum. A lecturer is
clarifying Indian lore for visitors.
Note the artifacts on display.
BOURTESY OF THE SMOKI MUSEUM
Below: A traditional Yavapai Indian
basket. Typically, the pattern for the
basket is created by the basketmaker.
COURTESY OF THE SMOKI MUSEUM.
Whites established compulsory Indian
schools that concentrated on re-education
designed to completely assimilate and remove
Indian ways from children. They were permitted
to speak only English. Later, this education
shifted toward instilling work ethic, sportsmanship,
and emphasis on scholarship. Years
later Indian families began to freely send their
children to the boarding schools for education.
The U.S. government allotted approximately
seventy-five acres of land northeast of Prescott,
formerly part of Fort Whipple, to the Yavapai
tribe as “Prescott Yavapai Indian Reservation,”
the smallest reservation in the country in 1935.
The Federal Government gave each family two
cows with the agreement that they would pay
back with two heifer calves as they were born.
Over the years the herd grew; some families sold
their cattle to those who chose to be cattlemen.
The Yavapai Indians received government
Civil Works Administration project support
during the Depression, and Sam Jimulla, later to
become tribal chief, was in charge of Indian
work crews for the WPA.They built stone, native
granite, and concrete homes and community
buildings. Tribal members are now restoring
these rock buildings.
Viola Jimulla became Yavapai chieftess after the
1940 death of her husband, Chief Sam Jimulla.
Sam and Viola had spearheaded efforts to have
Yavapai area officially designated as a reservation;
they succeeded to a degree. Seventy-five acres of
Fort Whipple were declared Yavapai Reservation.
Viola Jimulla was the only woman chief among
North American Indians. She served from 1940
until her death in 1966 at eighty-eight. She was
posthumously inducted into the Arizona Women’s
Hall of Fame.
In 1948 the Yavapai Indians filed a land
claim to receive payment for 9.2 million acres of
land in Central Arizona to which they held
Indian title. The reservation now encompasses
an area of approximately fourteen hundred
acres, bordered on three sides by the city of
Prescott. Bucky’s Casino, Frontier Village mall,
the tribe casino, and a smoke shop are now all
tribal enterprises or located on tribal land.
Yavapai men have served as Army scouts in
1870s, in the Marine Corps and Army during
World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and
Desert Storm Wars. Tribe President Ernie Jones,
Sr., himself a Vietnam veteran, is president of
the tribal board of directors.
The official tribal seal is a design created by
Viola Jimulla. What finer tribute could the tribal
elders make to perpetuate the memory of a
cherished chieftess who was also a consummate
basket weaver and artist?
26 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER IX
G OOD
S PORTS
“Play Ball!” and Prescott does. On the average, Prescott has at least four thousand people playing
softball each season—more players per capita than any other place in Arizona. That’s what makes
Prescott the “Softball Capital of the World.”
It all started in the 1960s, when a men’s international softball team took a side trip to Prescott on
their way to the championship in Mexico City. Word spread among other teams, and Prescott became
a stopover of choice, eventually housing and playing ball with teams from the Netherlands, New
Zealand, and countries all over the world. As a result Cambridge, New Zealand, is now Prescott’s
official sister city. Locals still vacation in participating foreign cities. Remember “People to People”
during the Eisenhower years? The international relationships that have grown up around Prescott’s
softball community are much the same thing.
A. C. Williams, now softball commissioner of Arizona, got the Prescott softball rolling. He
promoted men’s and women’s teams to participate in American Amateur Softball Association. Folks
in town helped by arranging fundraisers to finance expenses.
Antelope Hills Golf Course opened up golf enthusiasm in 1956, and the south course opened in
1992. There are other courses in the area extending from Dewey to the outskirts of town.
Prescott folks have flycast for rainbow trout, largemouth bass, catfish, and other fish in Watson,
Goldwater, Lynx, Willow, Mingus, and Granite Basin Lakes, and nearby Verde River for as long as
there have been fishing poles.
The old Prescott Downs racetrack and fairgrounds, which held thoroughbred and quarter horse
live racing since 1913, relocated to Prescott Valley. A one-and-a-half-mile track was built at that
location and was renamed Yavapai Downs in 2001.
Golfers on the links at the
Hassayampa Country Club in
the 1930s.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter IX ✦ 27

Above: What more could a tenderfoot
want? Tent, camping gear, guns, fancy
boots, and a hat.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Below: The Prescott baseball team was
ready to play ball in the 1870s. The
“B” on the players’ uniforms might
have been an acknowledgement of the
team’s sponsor.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Quarter horses have strong ties to Prescott.
Local rancher, John (J. T.) Cooper, discovered
Traveler, a quarter horse that was the foundation
sire of the entire breed.
Between 1983 and 2003, six human runners
have won the annual fifty-mile Man Against Horse
Race. Gheral Brownlow and a policeman, Steve
Rafters, launched the pitting of human runners
against horseback riders in a marathon. Brownlow,
later county supervisor, was a runner in that first
race. Hundreds of runners face the challenge of
elevation change from 5,000 to 7,500 feet on the
Mingus Mountain trail. Most riders dismount at
various points to help their horses endure the
steep and rocky terrain of the course. The 2002
winner, Hopi Indian Dennis Poolheco, finished in
6 hours and 56 minutes. He caught his breath and
then said, “It felt good to run next to horses.”
28 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER X
L AW & S OME O RDER
A few notes of crimes of the times that made local newspapers in the 1880s:
• A Phoenix man may have absconded rather than drowned in the Salt River.
• The U.S. Supreme Court declares that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over Indians who
commit crimes.
• T. J. Runk pleads guilty to grand larceny and horse stealing.
• Leonard Myers, ex-mayor of Phoenix and Wells, Fargo & Co. agent is wanted for default of $7,000
in San Francisco.
• Woodbury Howe offers $25 reward for pocket book lost between Milton and Mormon Dairy.
• S. Stover, St. Johns, held on $500 bond for pulling a briar root pipe on a man.
• Marcus Baca, St. Johns, stabs wife twice, $200 reward for him.
Pioneer Arizonans were people who fashioned a set of high-toned laws to live by. They wrote indictments
for crime in cryptic legal jargon. Courtroom standards were stern but not as harsh as folklore said.
Between 1875 and Arizona statehood in 1912, hundreds of murders were committed, yet there
were only forty-nine legal hangings in the entire territory. Of the 49 legal hangings, 10 were in Yavapai
County. Six of those murderers are buried in unmarked graves in Citizens Cemetery on Sheldon Street.
Lynch mobs and mob rule were less common than in much of America in the nineteenth century, yet
it appears that Arizona citizens felt they were above that and let the law take its course. We tend to think
that horse stealing was punishable by hanging, but there’s little evidence that it was. Train robbing was
indeed legally punishable by death in Arizona, but the sentence was not imposed.
The territorial governor granted pardons and paroles quite freely. Many big time criminals were
pardoned before their sentences were served.
There were so many towns in need of the law that a strong, brave young man could readily assume the
risk of “marshaling” and “lawing” as work. Many Eastern business interests wanted stability and valued
these marshals who protected their western investments.
There were some dandy laws on the books in the 1800s. Using obscene language in public was
punishable by a heavy fine. A federal law forbade selling whiskey to Indians. A disproportionate number
A handcuffed prisoner meets Prescott
Law in the sheriff’s office.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter X ✦ 29

of Mexicans was accused of crimes. Arizona had a
small black population, and historians feel that
Mexicans took the brunt of any racial injustice
In 1883 the Third District Court in Prescott
heard a water rights case. The attorney general and
his assistant came to blows with the opposing
attorney. Before the fray ended, the defendant
stabbed the two opposing litigants. The defendant
later died of wounds he suffered during the fray.
The legal process for an accused criminal began
with a preliminary examination before a justice of
the peace, who decided if there was sufficient
evidence to hold the defendant until the grand jury
got around to convening. A jury determined
whether an arrested criminal would be indicted. If
indicted, the case went to trial before the county
superior court. Superior court sessions were held
only four times a year. This involved system did not
work anything like the speedy “Frontier Justice” so
popular in legend. Law officers as well as witnesses
collected rewards for capturing outlaws.
Before 1881 the standard word for an amiable
hired hand on the ranch was “drover” or “stockman”
rather than “cowboy.” Unfortunately, there
was an outlaw gang that stole livestock from
ranchers, Mexicans, and the government that
identified itself by the name “Cowboys.” “Curly”
Bill Broncius and Johnny Ringo were members of
this band of thieves and murderers. Jargon of that
era was colorful: “Heeled” meant that a man carried
a gun. “Buffaloed” meant to be hit in the skull
with the barrel of a gun.
There were some genuine rogues. S. E. Blair
and John Littig “…stole away from Prescott. They
left, owing almost everybody. Littig has proved
himself both rogue and swindler,” said one
disgruntled businessman.
Legal entanglements in mining often involved
claim jumping, disputes over claim boundaries,
and stock swindles. One radiant example was
William Cole, a partner in the Swastika Mine. He
spent a few days in a drinking bout in 1876, and,
under the influence, he signed his ownership in
the mine over to May Bean, wife of one of his
partners. When Cole sobered up, he brought suit
to recover his ownership on the grounds that
while intoxicated he was incapable of transacting
business and the ownership transfer was not legal.
Even his lawyers portrayed him as an
irresponsible, disgraceful drunkard, while the
Bean’s lawyers described him as hardworking,
highly respected, and a model citizen. The other
owners incorporated the mine and placed the
disputed twenty-five percent of Cole’s ownership
into an escrow account. Most of the mine profits
went to line the pockets of attorneys who handled
the lawsuit that lingered for several years. The
case was resolved by Cole’s death.
Most towns in the Bradshaw Mountains
operated without a deputy sheriff or jail. The
Yavapai County sheriff handled law
enforcement in the area. Miners and merchants
were notorious for their lack of skill with
firearms. Several whiskey-induced shootouts
resulted in neither party being hit. The men
often were drinking together by nightfall.
The last of the gunmen and fighters of the old
West took a firm stand against civilization and the
law that crept westward. Some of the early settlers
were honest cattlemen; others were cattle rustlers
and were wanted by some sheriff somewhere.
Folks frowned upon the practice of branding
other people’s cows and horses or shooting a
citizen without proper regard for law and order.
Bitterness had been smoldering in Pleasant
Valley for several years in the 1880s between the
Graham brothers and the Tewksburys. There had
been an alliance with northern sheep owners concerning
grazing limits. A range war was brewing.
Old John Tewksbury and his three sons moved
to the Globe cattle country with a few cattle and just
wanted to live a peaceful life. Later, Tom and John
Graham came from California to nearby Pleasant
Valley. Andy Bivens, known as Andy Cooper to
avoid an inquiring Texas sheriff, was known as a
short triggerman, meaning he was all around bad.
He aligned with the Graham side of the feud.
The largest outfit in Arizona was the Aztec Land
and Cattle Co., known as the Hash Knife outfit
because of its brand. The company did not
participate in the Pleasant Valley war, but some of
its cowboys had a wild and lawless streak and
couldn’t keep out of a good fight. When it was all
over, the Graham family was completely wiped out.
Some said that that the feud started in a dispute
over the division of stolen cattle. It was known that
both the Graham and the Tewksbury boys, who
started out as friends, were rustling cattle and may
have had a dispute over the division of spoils of
their work. An account of rustling is based in
territorial court records showing charges were first
brought against the Grahams and then against
30 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

the Tewksburys. The next year the Grahams
retaliated by charging the Tewksbury brothers and
friends with cattle stealing. This action came
before the territorial court at Prescott in 1884 with
Judge Charles. P Hicks, an Arizona pioneer,
presiding over the case. It concerned ten head of
cattle, value at $20 each. The case was dismissed,
but the bitterness remained.
The story goes that the Graham and Tewksburg
sons were employed by another ranch as
cowboys, but instead of taking care of the cattle,
they combined their talents as rustlers and placed
their own brand upon their employer’s stock.
Meanwhile, northern sheepmen had been
lusting after the luxuriant grass in the valley, but
the rim of the Mogollon Mountains was a defined
barrier against sheep. Cattlemen had discovered
Pleasant Valley and intended to keep its range for
cattle. Either the 1884 charge of cattle stealing
against the brothers at Prescott or some other
grievance created a wound that did not heal.
The Daggs brothers, sheepmen, had to find
more range for winter feeding or release their
herds. Pleasant Valley was ideal for both winter
and summer grazing. They knew of the old
Graham and Tewksbury grudge. To break the
ranks of Pleasant Valley cattlemen and open the
country for sheep, they invited the Tewksburys to
talk. The Tewksburys rode into the sheep camp
and received a proposition from the Daggs
brothers whereby Daggs would send a band of
sheep into Pleasant Valley under the protection of
Tewksbury. After the first herd was established,
more sheep would be sent in until the rich range
would be fully stocked with sheep.
Tom Graham fired a few bullets through a
coffeepot near the sheepherders as a warning. It
didn’t work. The sheep were finally driven out
of the valley during the next spring, resulting in
the deaths of some of the shepherds and their
sheep. The Daggs brothers scheme had failed,
and the Tewksburys had been defeated by their
old enemies the Grahams. From a general sheep
and cattle war, the fighting developed into a
bloody vendetta.
Yavapai County Sheriff William Mulvenon
whipped up ten warrants for the arrests of the
murderers and set out for Pleasant Valley with a
large posse. The members of the Tewksbury family
were ambushed in their cabin. During a battle, two
men were killed in the yard. Hogs moved in on the
bodies and began to root at them. Mrs.Tewksbury
strode outside, declared a burial truce, and drove
the hogs away. She dug two shallow graves and
buried her husband and his comrade. She then
returned to the cabin and the fighting resumed. An
unwritten law of the range was that no harm
should come to a woman. In the toll of twelve
dead Graham men, only seven were known to
have been killed in battle with Tewksbury forces,
while five were shot by law officers.
Eventually the vendetta shifted to Prescott,
where both factions went before the grand jury.
The Tewksburys and their comrades were indicted
for murder. Afterwards, the Tewksburys and their
friends were released. Members of both sides, as
well as neutrals, were afraid to testify for fear of
assassination. The county attorney dismissed the
case on grounds of insufficient evidence. The feud
held the courts powerless.
Thomas Graham, the last of the three brothers,
was ambushed in 1892. Before he died, he
accused a Tewksbury and an accomplice of
his murder. The men were arrested, and a trial
was scheduled. In the end, the jury disagreed,
and the accused were released. This was the end
of the vendetta. No more Grahams were left to
carry on.
Other forms of law enforcement existed. In
1901, Governor Nathan Murphy authorized the
formation of the Arizona Rangers to carry law
into the desert and mesquite country. These
isolated areas were gathering points for outlaws.
The Rangers were trained to hunt down and
capture the lone wolves and gang members. The
bottom line was to discourage outlaws from
seeking shelter in Arizona. The Rangers acted as
state police force to help enforce law when local
authority was overtaxed. Until 1909, when the
group was disbanded, the Rangers helped track
down and arrest cattle rustlers and worked to
suppress striking miners. In 1909, the legislature
voted to discontinue the Arizona Rangers
because of lack of business. The Rangers then
reorganized as a social group, and this set
Yavapai County law in the hands of the sheriff,
the local police, and the U.S. Forest Service Law
Enforcement Division.
Today’s misdeeds are different from those
around the turn of the nineteenth century.
Shootings and train and stagecoach robberies
happened regularly then.
Chapter X ✦ 31

CHAPTER XI
P AINT
& SCULPTURE
The overpowering silver bull, created
by sculptor Natalie Krol, commands
attention on Whipple Street.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
A state that names the bola tie as its official state necktie is bound to take art seriously. Another
clue is that Prescott was once called “The Jewel of the Yavapai.” Prescott and its many artist/citizens
create, enjoy, and preserve art in many media.
Art foundries, where bronze sculptures are cast, had not been around in the West for very long when
Joe Noggle and Joe Best revived the art of wax casting of fine art bronzes in the 1950s. Noggle had
established a bronze foundry in the family backyard and produced the necessary alloy of copper and
tin with small amounts of lead and zinc. They used a metal shed to hold burnout ovens and facilities
for pouring metal and made do with scrap bronze for the first pours. Several foundry workers
apprenticed there, learned the craft, and later opened their own more sophisticated businesses. Some
early foundries made more utilitarian products like manhole covers, light poles and grates. In the 1950s
local sculptors needed a facility to cast their work in bronze. A bas relief sculpture of Theodore Roosevelt
was cast in commemoration of Roosevelt’s setting up the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve. These
days Prescott has several art foundries serving sculptors. The minerals and Western art of Arizona have
worked well together to produce sculptures that are on display all over the world.
Several art foundries are located in the area, including Bronzesmith and Dykeman Foundries, both in
Prescott Valley; Jarred Webb Foundry in Skull Valley; and Skurja Art Castings and Thumb Butte
Bronze, both in Prescott. John Skurja worked with Joe Noggle in his foundry before launching his own
Skurja Art Castings. His authority as a sculptor is evident within each of his whimsical frog sculptures that
are on display at galleries and botanical gardens throughout the country. Unique among all the
accomplished sculptors’ bronze artwork that Skurja Art Castings executes is the life-sized statue of Walt
Disney holding Mickey Mouse’s hand, which are featured in Disney locations throughout the world.
32 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

The Phippen Museum of Western Arts was
named for George Phippen, founder of the Cowboy
Artists of America Association. Here was a selftaught
cowboy artist whose collections usually
highlight western life and frontier themes. He and
his brother, Harold, set up the Bear Paw Bronze
Works in Skull Valley in 1965. The Museum holds
juried shows and displays impressive works.
The Smoki People were a group of local non-
Indian businessmen interested in the study and
preservation of southwestern Indian culture.
With donated land they began construction of a
rough stone museum to house their artifacts.
The Smoki Museum opened in 1935.
Sharlot Hall Museum was established in 1928
and expanded by Civil Works Administration
Project 42 in 1934. The historical museum is
named for the historian and writer Sharlot Hall.
She was one of the first six women elected to the
Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame. From 1928 until
her death in 1943, she collected artifacts, period
furniture, books, and clothing—her extensive
collection of artifacts and documents dating from
the mid-1800s are displayed in this museum.
Smoki Museum opened in 1935 as an Indian
ceremonial room. The Smoki group aspired to
preserve traditions of Hopi and other Indians
of the Southwest. The ceiling is composed of thirty
thousand pine sticks and has a flagstone kiva
(semi-underground chamber). Exhibitions include
Top, left: Now home to the Prescott
Fine Arts Association gallery and
theater, this building was once Sacred
Heart Catholic Church.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Top, right: The beginning of Fran
Wildman’s timeline that continues
from the courthouse Plaza to the
public library.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Below: A mural merging cultures
and nationalism.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Chapter XI ✦ 33

Above: Grazing horses, created by
artist Gene Galazan from found
materials, greet visitors to the Phippen
Museum of Western Arts.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Below: Petite Sharlot Hall in the gown
made of copper she wore to President
Woodrow Wilson’s 1925 inaugural
ball in Washington, D.C. Local
dignitaries stand beside her.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
a collection of artifacts unearthed from archeological
excavations in Chino Valley, Lynx Creek,
and Prescott that predating the arrival of
Christianity in the area.
The Prescott Fine Arts Association had been
Sacred Heart Catholic Church before it was
converted into a gallery and theater. For more
than thirty-four years, visual arts from sculpture
to watercolor, oils, pottery, and photography
have been exhibited in the gallery.
Most local museums offer art study through
docent programs. In addition, Prescott College
has photography programs, studio arts and
ceramic study. This private school has a public
gallery in the works. Embry Riddle Aeronautical
University regularly offers courses in the
appreciation of art and photography.
Yavapai College Arts Department lists courses
in various painting media; weaving; metal art;
photography; and art awareness. In addition, the
college has an art gallery that shares space with the
concert auditorium.
Private galleries have rotating shows for local
and outside artists in all media.
Way back in 1906 the city raised $10,000 and
commissioned a statue to honor Prescott’s Rough
Rider volunteers. The bronze sculpture was cast in
New York City by Solon Borglum, brother of the
artist who carved Mount Rushmore in South
Dakota. A 28-ton, 18-foot-high native granite
boulder from one of the neighboring mountains
served as the pedestal. It remains rough, as it was
when brought from the mountainside, setting off
the Rough Rider feature.
Nine years after Buckey O’Neill’s death, the
Remington-style statue, commemorating the
Arizona Rough Riders and their chief officer,
Buckey O’Neill, was unveiled on the north
side of the Yavapai County Courthouse. The
statue dedication reads “To the Memory of
Captain William O. O’Neill—In Honor of the
Rough Riders.”
Another artist who studied art in New York
City and made a mark in Prescott was Kate Cory.
She was born to a prominent New York family
and came west in 1912 to chronicle scenes on the
Hopi mesa. Author, sculptor, photographer, and
Indian lore historian, she lived on the Hopi
reservation and eventually moved to Prescott. She
painted as well as photographed Indians and was
active in Prescott community work. Her artwork
is on display at the Smoki Museum. Cory died in
1958 at ninety-six in the Arizona Pioneers’ Home.
The Shrine of “Saint Joseph of the
Mountains,” located about a half-mile west of
Yarnell on a Weaver Mountain hillside, was
sculpted by Felix Lucero. The Way of the
Cross—replicas of the Garden of Gethsemane
and the Last Supper, created in reinforced
concrete—decorate the chapel.
The original Plaza bandstand that survived the
1900 Whiskey Row fire was pulled down to make
room for the dedication ceremony of the Rough
Rider statue in 1907. A replacement was built in
1908 on the same spot and still stands. It appears
to be a giant lawn gazebo at first glance. The
height and impressive ornamentation show how
easily a band fits inside. Frequently wedding
ceremonies are celebrated at this Plaza showpiece,
as well as nostalgic summer concerts and shows.
34 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER XI
P AINT
& SCULPTURE
The overpowering silver bull, created
by sculptor Natalie Krol, commands
attention on Whipple Street.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
A state that names the bola tie as its official state necktie is bound to take art seriously. Another
clue is that Prescott was once called “The Jewel of the Yavapai.” Prescott and its many artist/citizens
create, enjoy, and preserve art in many media.
Art foundries, where bronze sculptures are cast, had not been around in the West for very long when
Joe Noggle and Joe Best revived the art of wax casting of fine art bronzes in the 1950s. Noggle had
established a bronze foundry in the family backyard and produced the necessary alloy of copper and
tin with small amounts of lead and zinc. They used a metal shed to hold burnout ovens and facilities
for pouring metal and made do with scrap bronze for the first pours. Several foundry workers
apprenticed there, learned the craft, and later opened their own more sophisticated businesses. Some
early foundries made more utilitarian products like manhole covers, light poles and grates. In the 1950s
local sculptors needed a facility to cast their work in bronze. A bas relief sculpture of Theodore Roosevelt
was cast in commemoration of Roosevelt’s setting up the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve. These
days Prescott has several art foundries serving sculptors. The minerals and Western art of Arizona have
worked well together to produce sculptures that are on display all over the world.
Several art foundries are located in the area, including Bronzesmith and Dykeman Foundries, both in
Prescott Valley; Jarred Webb Foundry in Skull Valley; and Skurja Art Castings and Thumb Butte
Bronze, both in Prescott. John Skurja worked with Joe Noggle in his foundry before launching his own
Skurja Art Castings. His authority as a sculptor is evident within each of his whimsical frog sculptures that
are on display at galleries and botanical gardens throughout the country. Unique among all the
accomplished sculptors’ bronze artwork that Skurja Art Castings executes is the life-sized statue of Walt
Disney holding Mickey Mouse’s hand, which are featured in Disney locations throughout the world.
32 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

The Phippen Museum of Western Arts was
named for George Phippen, founder of the Cowboy
Artists of America Association. Here was a selftaught
cowboy artist whose collections usually
highlight western life and frontier themes. He and
his brother, Harold, set up the Bear Paw Bronze
Works in Skull Valley in 1965. The Museum holds
juried shows and displays impressive works.
The Smoki People were a group of local non-
Indian businessmen interested in the study and
preservation of southwestern Indian culture.
With donated land they began construction of a
rough stone museum to house their artifacts.
The Smoki Museum opened in 1935.
Sharlot Hall Museum was established in 1928
and expanded by Civil Works Administration
Project 42 in 1934. The historical museum is
named for the historian and writer Sharlot Hall.
She was one of the first six women elected to the
Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame. From 1928 until
her death in 1943, she collected artifacts, period
furniture, books, and clothing—her extensive
collection of artifacts and documents dating from
the mid-1800s are displayed in this museum.
Smoki Museum opened in 1935 as an Indian
ceremonial room. The Smoki group aspired to
preserve traditions of Hopi and other Indians
of the Southwest. The ceiling is composed of thirty
thousand pine sticks and has a flagstone kiva
(semi-underground chamber). Exhibitions include
Top, left: Now home to the Prescott
Fine Arts Association gallery and
theater, this building was once Sacred
Heart Catholic Church.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Top, right: The beginning of Fran
Wildman’s timeline that continues
from the courthouse Plaza to the
public library.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Below: A mural merging cultures
and nationalism.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Chapter XI ✦ 33

Above: Grazing horses, created by
artist Gene Galazan from found
materials, greet visitors to the Phippen
Museum of Western Arts.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Below: Petite Sharlot Hall in the gown
made of copper she wore to President
Woodrow Wilson’s 1925 inaugural
ball in Washington, D.C. Local
dignitaries stand beside her.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
a collection of artifacts unearthed from archeological
excavations in Chino Valley, Lynx Creek,
and Prescott that predating the arrival of
Christianity in the area.
The Prescott Fine Arts Association had been
Sacred Heart Catholic Church before it was
converted into a gallery and theater. For more
than thirty-four years, visual arts from sculpture
to watercolor, oils, pottery, and photography
have been exhibited in the gallery.
Most local museums offer art study through
docent programs. In addition, Prescott College
has photography programs, studio arts and
ceramic study. This private school has a public
gallery in the works. Embry Riddle Aeronautical
University regularly offers courses in the
appreciation of art and photography.
Yavapai College Arts Department lists courses
in various painting media; weaving; metal art;
photography; and art awareness. In addition, the
college has an art gallery that shares space with the
concert auditorium.
Private galleries have rotating shows for local
and outside artists in all media.
Way back in 1906 the city raised $10,000 and
commissioned a statue to honor Prescott’s Rough
Rider volunteers. The bronze sculpture was cast in
New York City by Solon Borglum, brother of the
artist who carved Mount Rushmore in South
Dakota. A 28-ton, 18-foot-high native granite
boulder from one of the neighboring mountains
served as the pedestal. It remains rough, as it was
when brought from the mountainside, setting off
the Rough Rider feature.
Nine years after Buckey O’Neill’s death, the
Remington-style statue, commemorating the
Arizona Rough Riders and their chief officer,
Buckey O’Neill, was unveiled on the north
side of the Yavapai County Courthouse. The
statue dedication reads “To the Memory of
Captain William O. O’Neill—In Honor of the
Rough Riders.”
Another artist who studied art in New York
City and made a mark in Prescott was Kate Cory.
She was born to a prominent New York family
and came west in 1912 to chronicle scenes on the
Hopi mesa. Author, sculptor, photographer, and
Indian lore historian, she lived on the Hopi
reservation and eventually moved to Prescott. She
painted as well as photographed Indians and was
active in Prescott community work. Her artwork
is on display at the Smoki Museum. Cory died in
1958 at ninety-six in the Arizona Pioneers’ Home.
The Shrine of “Saint Joseph of the
Mountains,” located about a half-mile west of
Yarnell on a Weaver Mountain hillside, was
sculpted by Felix Lucero. The Way of the
Cross—replicas of the Garden of Gethsemane
and the Last Supper, created in reinforced
concrete—decorate the chapel.
The original Plaza bandstand that survived the
1900 Whiskey Row fire was pulled down to make
room for the dedication ceremony of the Rough
Rider statue in 1907. A replacement was built in
1908 on the same spot and still stands. It appears
to be a giant lawn gazebo at first glance. The
height and impressive ornamentation show how
easily a band fits inside. Frequently wedding
ceremonies are celebrated at this Plaza showpiece,
as well as nostalgic summer concerts and shows.
34 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER XIII
M INERALS & M EN
There was glitter in the ground in the Prescott neighborhood in the mid-1800s—gold. Wagon
trains of gold seekers and settlers headed for central Arizona hoping to become millionaires. A
few of them did.
The Spanish conquistadors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries left little trace of their sporadic
searches for gold in the central Arizona. They failed. The Mexicans had managed to extract some gold
before the Apaches drove them out. Two hundred years later, mountain men such as Jedediah Smith,
“Old” Bill Williams, Francois Xavier Aubrey, Kit Carson, and Paulino Weaver prospected successfully
near Prescott. Weaver had guided the Mormon Battalion through Arizona to California in 1847 and led
a party that discovered the gold strikes at Rich Hill, southwest of Prescott. Weaver, probably Prescott’s
first English-speaking resident, was living along Granite Creek near the present town site.
Panning for gold was hard work. It meant getting to the mineral within the gravel and sand.
Natural erosion wore down the rock in which gold was embedded; miners washed the resulting
gravel to retrieve the heavier gold. However, when gold is too solidly embedded, it must first be dug
out of the ground, pulverized, and then washed to release gold.
The California military sent soldiers to Wickenburg mines, south of Prescott when word of
Arizona gold strikes spread west in the mid-1860s. Their mission was to establish a route, estimate
the value of the mines, and ostensibly to protect them from Yavapai and Apache Indians. General
James H. Carleton’s California Volunteers had joined the Union Army to get a free trip to the Arizona
mineral fields and hoped to relive the prosperity of the 1849 California gold rush.
The frontier prospector, his pack
mule, and his pick searching for
mineral riches.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter XIII ✦ 39

A Porter locomotive, c. 1887. The
narrow-gauge engine pulled orecars
from the Congress mine.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Arizona’s undeveloped mineral wealth
provided a convincing argument for the
conception of this new territory. The Union and
Confederacy each raced to secure the area’s
mineral wealth. Captain Nathaniel J. Pishon led
his First Cavalry from Santa Fe to the Prescott
gold fields and made camp near Granite Creek.
A wise move; the nearby Lynx Creek strike was
the richest streambed in Arizona, ultimately
yielding $2 million in gold.
In 1863, President Lincoln pronounced
Arizona a separate territory of the United States.
In 1878 Congress authorized the minting of
silver coins. The price of silver instantly soared
on the stock exchange. Silver mines became
extremely profitable.
It wasn’t all digging and washing. Well-dressed
speculators were busy enticing investors to sink
money in Arizona mining. The Walker Prospecting
and Mining Company on Granite Creek was one of
the first documented gold claims in central
Arizona. Curtis Coe Bean, a rancher near Prescott,
formed the Prescott Mining Company of New York
to lure eastern investors.
Other miners and prospectors responded to
slick aggrandizement of Bradshaw mines and
headed toward Prescott silver deposits. The Tiger
silver mine was said to be fifty feet deep. The local
newspaper ran shameless editorials urging
prospectors to explore the Prescott hills. “The
acknowledged wealth of the silver mines and the
suddenness with which they have raised many
poor men to a condition of untold wealth…. New
and valuable discoveries are reported every week.”
Yavapai County population increased about
forty percent from 1870 to 1890, thanks to
mining industry growth. The county was rich in
gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc. By 1890 more
than sixty percent of the county’s voters were
involved in mining or related work. Transporting
ore from isolated mines to distant smelting
facilities was profitable business. More than
twenty-four thousand mining claims were filed by
May 1893—most in the Bradshaw Mountains
The first Prescott bank was chartered in 1877,
ready to weigh the gold brought in by miners and
to serve prosperous citizens. Those were the days
when a handshake could secure a loan agreement.
Many an unkempt prospector’s grubstake started
out from an imposing Prescott bank.
The Prescott Mining Company and Lynx Creek
Gold & Land Company each had holdings in a
long list of small mines. An English corporation
held a twenty-one-year lease to one local mining
company. Work went beyond simple picks and
shovels. Hydraulic plants did wholesale panning.
Amalgamators, concentrators, and separating
apparatuses were invented right in the field and
patented by mining engineers.
The U.S. Department of Mineral Lands and
Mining granted permits that clearly spelled out
regulations concerning mineral prospecting.
Water and dam sites were essential, since a claim
was only as good as its accompanying water
rights. Dynamite was also important for mining
and was highly unstable. It could explode at the
slightest provocation by temperature, humidity,
40 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

or movement. Large dynamite shipments to
mines were delivered in buckboard, and smaller
orders were carried by pack animals.
Before 1881 it was difficult to import mining
and other supplies from back East. They had to be
shipped around the tip of South America to the
mouth of the Colorado River. Transporting metals
from Prescott mines to eastern markets took a
reverse route. In 1881 the Southern Pacific Railroad
connected with the Atchison, Topeka, and
Santa Fe Railroad, and shipments went by wagon
to a point twenty-five miles south of Phoenix and
loaded on train for a faster trip to the East Coast.
Arizona has long been called the copper mining
capital of the United States. The copper mine
closest to Prescott is sixty miles east in Bagdad. The
De Soto mine was another Bradshaw Mountain
digging. The owners built a four-thousand-footlong,
aerial, gravity-operated tram-way to move
ore to the railroad. A German design, it was
manufactured in this country in 1904 and had a
daily capacity of two thousand tons. Loaded
buckets going down the mountain furnished the
power to return empty containers up to the mine.
Copper was first discovered in the Jerome
district in 1877 by Al Sieber, an Apache wars scout
who staked out a claim in the Black Hills section.
Others located claims in Jerome and, by 1882,
several small-scale mines were operating. The
Verde Queen Company bought out Sieber’s old
claim. George Treadwell joined a partner and
formed the United Verde Copper Company.
Eugene Jerome, after whom the town was named,
was secretary and treasurer. In 1888, Senator
William Clark, a Montana copper king, secured a
lease on the property and later purchased
controlling interest. Jerome was the richest copper
district in Arizona and among the most productive
in the United States. Things moved fast. A narrow
gauge railroad and other improvements were
added. In 1915, a new reduction plant was
completed, and nearby Clarkdale was founded.
Large-scale hardship hit other mining areas.
Eastern investments suffered, some lured by
fraudulent promoters who kept some mines
operating after the ore was gone. People moved
away, and towns disintegrated as stores and schools
closed and post offices discontinued service.
The bottom fell out of the copper market
after World War I. In 1916, copper sold for
27¢ a pound, but by 1921 it was down to 12¢
a pound. But mining goes on. The Department
of Mines and Mineral Resources estimates
approximately 1,940 mines operate today in
Yavapai County.
In March 1925, Sharlot Hall, Arizona’s “poetess
laureate,” wore a gown made of thin copper to
President Woodrow Wilson’s inaugural ball.
The Forest Service now recognizes gold
panning and metal detecting as legitimate
recreation—with some restrictions: No motorized
or mechanical equipment. Gold pans, metal
detectors, shovels, and hand tools are suitable for
dilettantes prospecting for mineral treasures.
The “donkey” that pulled ore carts out
of the mine on rails.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Chapter XIII ✦ 41

CHAPTER XIV
P RESCOTT
E MBELLISHED
Gambling at the Palace Bar in 1901
offered variety. Note the “mustache
towels” attached to the elaborate bar.
Spittoons were strategically spaced for
customer convenience. The elaborate
pressed tin ceiling was a fine point
in style.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Prescott was reborn culturally after the fire. East of the Plaza, the Elks Theater and Opera House
was built for $65,000. It illustrates a transition from Victorian styles of the nineteenth century to that
of Chicago architect Louis Sullivan, who designed with the straight-line and neo-classical forms of
the early twentieth century.
Sir Harry Lauder, John Philip Sousa, and even Tom Mix with “Tony the Wonder Horse” performed
at the nine-hundred-seat theater. It hosted graduations, professional dramas, and minstrel shows
and, in May 1916, the first motion picture, Birth of a Nation, played. Restoration to make a
more functional theater began in 2002. Across the street is the grand dame of downtown
Prescott, the Hassayampa Inn, built in 1927. The lobby is a majestic marriage of art deco and
Southwest décor.
Prescott Yavapai Indian women are acclaimed expert basket weavers. Native designs incorporate
many elements, such as the diamond and lightning and are used in their basket works. The starflower
design is a sacred symbol to Yavapai; birds, animals, and human figures tell the story of
creation. The swastika is a mystic symbol of good luck to the Indian, and is said to bring good fortune
when used on baskets, pottery, and blankets.
42 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Young shoots of cottonwood and mulberry
trees and fine roots of yucca or soapweed are
used to create natural color for baskets. The first
coil of a Yavapai basket is generally black,
produced from stripped ears of the devil’s claw
seedpod. A zigzag pattern in an encircling
straight line often highlights the design. The
black strip of the final row indicates that the
basketmaker has completed the piece.
George Phippen of Skull Valley founded the
Cowboy Artists of America in 1965. Phippen
Museum in Prescott is named for him. Charlie
Dye of Verde Valley; Joe Beeler, an artist
and sculptor from Sedona; and John Hampton,
an ex-rancher and acclaimed sculptor, all
helped in the creation of the CAA, which is
recognized worldwide.
Many folks born in Prescott remain here;
others venture to other parts of the country
and the world. Fran Wildman was born in
Prescott but moved away when he was a
child. He and his wife traveled during his
military career and, in 1966, wandered back to
Prescott. They bought some property and
remain in the area.
Wildman etched and painted several history
timelines on Prescott sidewalks. The original
1975 Prescott Library timeline had 163 entries
of world history. It was extended in 1984 to 100
yards in length and was expanded to include
332 entries. Other local efforts include the
Granite Mountain Middle School’s theme,
Southwest History, which features the Grand
Canyon; and the Abia Judd School’s Vine of
Learning. Two and a half weeks’ physical work
and research went into the Courthouse Plaza
project facing Gurley Street. The letter “P”
markers reference Prescott’s history, such as
the opening of the first public school in 1867 or
the first trolley roaring along Prescott’s streets
in 1907.
In 1913, the year after Arizona became a state,
the movie industry came to Yavapai County. Tom
Mix made at least 30 one- and two-reel silent
movies at Selig Polyscope. Many were shown at
the Elks Theater. Colonel William N. Selig, a
motion picture pioneer, selected Prescott as the
absolute Western location for movies. The Selig
studio shot scenes on the Bar-Circle-A Ranch and
in Granite Dells. Tom Mix was one of the first
major film stars who had been a true cowboy
before he made a movie career. He had
performed with a Wild West show and earned the
title “World Champion Cowboy” in 1908. Mix
became an insider in Prescott after he won the
National Rodeo Championship at the 1909
Frontier Days Rodeo in trick and fancy roping,
bulldogging, steer riding, and the potato sack
race. His early silent films are now classics, most
notably Riders of the Purple Sage. He was his
own stuntman, riding off cliffs and jumping
off stagecoaches. By 1920, Mix was America’s
top crowd-drawing Western film actor. He
traditionally booked a room at the Hotel
Vendome for a full year.
Top: The Elks Theatre when silent
movies were the major attraction.
COURTESY OF PROFESSOR HALL’S CINEMA MUSEUM.
Above: The interior of the early Elks
Theatre flaunted elegant boxes on
either side of the stage. The floor seats
could be removed so the theater could
host a fancy ball.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter XIV ✦ 43

The lobby poster of Tom Mix and
“Tony the Wonder Horse” advertising
the movie Sky High.
COURTESY OF ARIZONA HIGHWAYS.
In October 1940, Mix, while driving his Cord
automobile along a highway near Florence,
Arizona, crashed into a shallow arroyo and
died. A monument now stands near the site of the
fatal accident.
Tex Ritter and Evelyn Finley both acted in
Arizona Frontier, which was shot in Granite
Dells. Prescott’s Dorothy Fay (Southworth) had
made The Stranger with Buck Jones in 1938. She
had dropped the prominent doctor’s family
“Southworth” name. Ritter later met Dorothy
Fay, and they married in 1941. The ceremony
took place in the Congregational Church in
town. Barry Goldwater served as an usher at
the ceremony. A hometown girl married a big
Hollywood star.
Tex Ritter rode “White Flash,” an Arizona
horse, challenging Gene Autry for the top spot at
the box office in the 1930s. Gene Autry, in turn,
called Tom Mix a “true son of the Old West,”
although Mix was born in Pennsylvania. Autry
owned the California Angels baseball team.
Take a walk down Whiskey Row and look at
1800s-style buildings. Pass by The Palace and
other old-timey bars/restaurants. Note the absence
of parking meters. Glance across the street at the
gazebo bandstand in the Courthouse Plaza, and
you’re in a period movie set. Almost. Wander past
quaint hotels and old Victorian homes
characteristic of New England farther out of town
and glance at graveyards with headstones that date
back to 1864. Head out to Granite Dells, take a
dirt road into the huge Ponderosa Pines forest,
climb elephant-sized boulders, and look up at the
brilliant blue sky mottled with soft clouds. If
you’re a movie director, you’ve found the spot to
film a western, a sci fi, or a movie set in the 1800s.
These are the reasons why scenes in the
following movies were shot hereabouts: Arizona
Frontier, Billy Jack, Bless the Beasts and Children,
Creep Show, Escape, Jackson County Jail, Evil Dead
II: Dead by Dawn, The Getaway, The Gumball
Rally, How the West was Won, Kingdom of the
Spiders, Leave Her to Heaven, Living a Lie,
National Lampoon’s Vacation, Nightfall, Nobody’s
Fool, Sunchaser, Universal Soldier, Wanda
Nevada, and The Zoo Gang.
In addition to handsome settings, Hollywood
obtained live props from the environment.
Outdoorsman Wayland Potter acquired a pair of
wolves. With no place to keep them in town, he
moved them to artist George Phippen’s rural
place. The wolves were used in the movie The
Legend of Lobo. The Gardner family took care of
44 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

the two bear cubs that were used in Disney’s
1962 film The Yellowstone Cubs. Disney Studios
used Wayland’s trained animals in many wildlife
films. When not on camera, the animals were
kept in the Gardner backyard in large cages.
The cowboy oral tradition of storytelling and
music-making has been a long-time tradition at
Sharlot Hall Museum’s Cowboy Poetry Gathering
each August.
All the Ponderosa Pines surrounding Prescott
support its reputation as Arizona’s official
“Christmas City.” Each year, the city unfailingly
hosts old-fashioned parades and a lighting of the
Courthouse lights. The annual Acker Music
Showcase is a moveable medley of local music
groups hosted in concert at downtown businesses.
The original Plaza bandstand survived the
1900 Whiskey Row fire and was later pulled
down to make room for the 1907 Rough Rider
statue dedication. The second Plaza bandstand
was built in 1908 and stands on the same spot
as the original. At first glance, it appears to be a
huge gazebo. Prescott mayor Burt Stilton, the
owner of a music store, once conducted the city
band in weekly concerts.
A stroll on Mt. Vernon Street returns one
to a century of Prescott’s most impressive
neighborhoods, peppered with late Colonial
Revival homes and Craftsman bungalows along
the eastern edge. Ironwork fences, stained glass,
awnings, ornate stone, and wood fronts give
the neighborhood a distinctive white-collar look.
According to experts, it is the most outstanding
collection of Victorian homes in the state.
A watchmaker organized the first Prescott
Brass Band in 1865. Fort Whipple and the
military brought music to social functions on
the post and into Prescott from 1892 to 1898.
When the Eleventh Infantry Band came to Fort
Whipple in 1892, it brought bandmaster Achille
LaGuardia. Unfortunately the outbreak of the
Spanish-American War in 1898 brought an end
to Whipple bands when the infantry shipped out
to Tampa.
Fiorello (loosely translated “little flower”)
LaGuardia was born into this musical family and
lived in Prescott until after his graduation from
grammar school. From Prescott, where he talked
with miners and cowboys and learned how to
shoot, he traveled east, eventually serving as
mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945.
Another local music mentor was Gabriel
Payne, a violin teacher and violin maker during
the 1920s and 1930s. He taught some of his
high school music students to make their own
violins from local wood.
Out Our Way cartoonist J. R. Williams ranched
on Walnut Creek, where he accumulated material
for his western cartoons. Will Rogers visited
Prescott frequently and rode in the Frontier Days
Parade. On the eighty-eighth anniversary of the
nation’s independence, Fort Whipple troops
participated in a Fourth of July celebration with a
formal military review on the Plaza. The Miner
reported that those who stayed at Prescott’s only
hotel and restaurant, the Juniper House, had
the following Fourth of July special breakfast:
“Beef steak, venison steak, fried liver, mutton
chops, tea, and coffee, with milk.” Early cuisine
was rudimentary. The only restaurant in town
featured a standard menu of:
• Breakfast: Fried venison and chili, bread and
coffee with milk.
• Dinner: Roast venison and chili, chili-baked
beans, chili on tortillas, tea and coffee
with milk.
• Supper: Chili from 4 o’clock on.
A special event in 1864 was observed by a
thirty-five-gun salute at Fort Whipple. It was a
makeshift arrangement using anvils; the only
available ordnance, since there was no cannon.
The Lubin Film Company’s 1912
film The Cringer was shot in the
Prescott area.
COURTESY OF LINDA WOAL.
Chapter XIV ✦ 45

The streets of the new town were named after
people closely identified with Southwest history:
Gurley Street was named for John A. Gurley, who
was appointed first governor of Arizona but died
before he could serve. John N. Goodwin, the first
governor of Arizona; Richard C. McCormick, the
first territorial secretary of state and second
governor of Arizona; and President Abraham
Lincoln, who signed the bill making Arizona a
territory, are all remembered in Prescott’s streets
—Goodwin and McCormick Streets, and
Lincoln Avenue.
Whipple Street and Fort Whipple were
named for an early Arizona surveyor. Carleton
Street was named for General James H. Carleton,
who established Arizona’s boundaries. Coronado
Street was named in honor of Francisco Vasquez
Coronado, who came to this country in 1540
from Mexico searching for the “Seven Cities of
Cibola.” Alas, there is no Buckey O’Neill Street.
Throughout town, street patterns obstinately
ignore (or acquiesce to) steep hills everywhere,
the influences of certain locations, early
innovations, and historical accidents. That’s the
character of the town.
Bullwacker Hill (on Route 69) was also was
the name of a mine. The configuration of the hill
has been changed by Prescott Gateway Mall
construction. Name probably applied to the
“whacking” needed to encourage horses and
oxen to pull loads up the hill.
During the Great Depression, Prescott
Chamber of Commerce Secretary Grace Sparkes
spearheaded efforts to provide work relief and
encourage private charity. The Chamber
organized construction projects such as laying
concrete curbing and erecting a grandstand at
the playground. This employed 250 local men
at $2.50 a day. The Rotary Club donated a
$3,500 emergency fund to aid the unemployed.
The director of the Prescott Tuberculosis
Sanatorium worked with other civic figures to
find jobs for over 150 local men and women.
In 1933 the Federal Civil Works
Administration shifted many Yavapai County
unemployed men from work relief to CWA
employment. They built a bridge across Granite
Creek on Goodwin Street; improved the city
playground; constructed a wall around the old
Citizens Cemetery; constructed an annex to the
Smoki building; erected a community house and
homes on the Prescott Yavapai Indian Reservation;
renovated the fairgrounds; and constructed a
museum building west of the Old Governor’s
Mansion. The Prescott Armory (renamed Grace
Sparkes Memorial Activity Center in 2003) was
also the product of Works Progress Administration
efforts. WPA recreational projects in Prescott
backed baseball and basketball activity by
constructing playing fields. Another employment
booster was the Emergency Relief Administration
of Arizona. All of these programs kept citizens
from moving out of town to seek work.
Roberts’ Rules of Order were being formed
by Major Henry Roberts before he was stationed
at Fort Whipple. The story goes that during the
1860s he attended a badly organized meeting,
dashed out, and worked up the Pocket Manual
of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies
(later named Roberts’ Rules of Order) to
generate some focus to meetings.
Order out of chaos—straight out of Prescott.
In 1934, Goodwin Street got a facelift
thanks to the state-of-the-art
construction equipment of the time.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
46 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

CHAPTER XV
T RACKS TO AND FROM P RESCOTT
Tom Bullock, a former Whiskey Row bartender, came up with the idea of a rail line to link Prescott
with the Santa Fe mainline at Seligman. In 1886, Prescottonians raised $300,000 to construct the seventyfive
miles of track. The contract stipulated that Bullock’s train had to reach Prescott no later than midnight,
December 31, or face a stiff $l,000-a-mile penalty. No sooner had construction begun than beer was
shipped in for mobile saloons set up along the way. Railroad building has always been thirsty work.
Cattlemen, angry over the railroad right-of-way crossing their grazing lands, had cowboys
stampede cattle through the construction. Back in Prescott there was heavy betting on whether or not
Bullock would meet his deadline. Some gamblers tried to hedge their bets by ransacking the line.
Someone tried to blow up a caboose. Vandals tried to derail the work train by removing a section
of track. The dogged tracklayers did reach Granite Dells, only two miles from Prescott, with one day
to go. Odds against the Bullock line reaching Prescott on time had sprung as high as 20-to-1.
Volunteers pitched in to work with the crews. The Bullock line reached Prescott with five minutes
to spare. Conrad Zulick, territorial governor, drove a gilded spike into a tie painted red, white, and
blue. Railroad arrived in Prescott in 1886, but passengers didn’t have a depot. In 1890 the line from
Santa Fe Railroad train puffing
through Granite Dells on the way into
the Prescott Depot. Note the “cowcatcher”
on the front of the coalburning
engine.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter XV ✦ 47

Below: Townspeople crowded near the
train in which President William
Howard Taft passed through Prescott
in 1918.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Bottom: A private biplane ready to
take off for the Rimrock Ranch. The
ten-gallon hats may not have been
standard attire for pilots.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Prescott to Phoenix was completed, and Prescott
finally joined both the southern and northern
main lines.
The territory’s principal back road follows the
abandoned bed of an ore-hauling railroad that
had served once prime gold country in the
rugged Bradshaw Mountains. Businessman
Frank Murphy held gold and silver mining
properties in those mountains. Not a politician;
he did control a bank, five railroads, two
newspapers, several mining companies, and a
land development company. He was the prime
mover behind the construction of the Santa Fe,
Prescott, and Phoenix Railway. He had already
built the famous Santa Fe line called
“Peavine”—named for the way the tracks
twisted through the mountains going toward
Prescott. Later he ran a line from Prescott to
Mayer. In 1901, Murphy hired gandy dancers
and steel driving men from back East. They
received top wages in Prescott—$1 a day. An
eight-thousand-foot-tunnel that linked the
Lynx-Walker mine above the community of
Poland was just one hurdle. From that point
gold ore was transferred to the smelter in
Humboldt, south of Prescott.
The Southern Pacific line out of Phoenix
pulled a maximum of three cars at a time.
Forward motion was restricted to downhill or
level terrain requiring the line to back up the
entire way north from Prescott to Seligman. The
train stopped along the way for the crew to buy
beer, shoot game, or repair railroad ties and
telegraph lines. Those telegraph lines were
useful to gamblers. One operator rigged a wire
directly to a Whiskey Row saloon and placed
railroad workers’ bets over the line.
The high cost of shipping ore was only one
concern of mine operators. Holdups, ambushes,
“spooked” horses, Indian hostilities, and
runaway wagons were also railroading problems.
Frank Murphy had imagination and business
shrewdness, as well as salesmanship. Financed by
a Chicago uncle, an associate of Marshall Field (of
department store fame) and Dexter Ferry of the
seed business, plus Eastern capitalists and
financiers who came to Prescott, he built a
railroad from Prescott into the Bradshaw
Mountains for Eastern mining investors.
The Yavapai County sheriff devised a solution
to the annoying manpower shortage. He
rounded up hobos and transients, arrested them
for vagrancy, and threw them in jail. He then
encouraged them to work for early release by
joining railroad construction crews.
In 1891, Governor John N. Irwin signed “A
Bill to Encourage the Construction of Railroads
within the Territory of Arizona.” This loophole
granted twenty-year exemptions from taxation
for railroads built according to certain
specifications. It mandated that railroads run
daily trains and made it clear that the act did not
apply to changes made in routing of existing
roads. That chilled opportunists filching
unearned tax relief.
The short Prescott and Eastern line crossed a
diverse countryside through the Granite Dells,
around Lonesome Valley and on to a siding near
the Jerome road. From there it crossed Lynx
48 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Creek and down to the lush grain fields of the
Agua Fria Valley, onward to the first depot on
the line at Cherry Creek. Near Humboldt it
veered southwest toward the Bradshaw foothills
and Big Bug mining country. Granite Dells (then
called Point of Rocks) was the tricky spot. Mail
carriers and stage teamsters were easy targets for
renegade Indians who attacked travelers from
hiding places behind large boulders. By the
1870s, Indian hostilities diminished, but the
Dells continued to attract highwaymen.
In 1902, railroad workers discovered gold
valued at more than $30 a ton. The owners of the
property on which railroad grading was being
done demanded that their ore be piled neatly off
the side and not used for grading purposes. The
laborers figured they had discovered an ““El
Dorado” of their own. Why should they do
backbreaking labor for a few dollars a day when
gold lay close to surface of the land? Many
workers left crews to prospect but few succeeded;
they knew nothing about mining. The railroad
then imported Italian laborers from the Midwest
to supplement construction crews. Greek and
Italian stonemasons, valued for their skill in
building retaining walls without mortar, were
brought to the West.
In 1882 the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad
crossed Arizona Territory along the thirty-fifth
parallel, approximately thirty-five miles north of
the rich copper mines at Jerome. Corporate-type
mining interests could not generate financial
support needed to construct a railroad directly
to Jerome. They lobbied to build a line from the
Prescott A&P main line. Prescott residents, in
turn, pledged assistance to bring railroad service
to their community.
The Prescott and Arizona Central operated a
sloppy business. The line neglected to build
either a wye (track shaped in the letter Y) or a
turntable to allow engines to turn around.
Trains had to back up the entire distance on a
return trip. That wasn’t all, bad weather
damaged the railroad tracks built on flimsy
base. The line did not maintain schedule—
shipments were late. Not surprisingly, the line
was forced out of business.
In the mid-1950s the Santa Fe Railroad looked
at steep six percent grades and sharp curves
on the line between Skull Valley and Prescott,
and executives decided to bypass the line.
By the 1960s passenger service to Prescott was
eliminated. Freight service continued on the old
Santa Fe, Prescott, and Phoenix line until it was
last used for railroad business in 1988.
The Santa Fe Depot in Prescott is Mission
Revival Style, with a poured concrete, barreltile
roof, classic Southwestern architecture. It
no longer functions as it was designed to when
built in 1907, nor does the railroad. Rails
into and around Prescott have since been
removed. The classic depot structure has been
transformed into an office building and now
spearheads the Depot Shopping Center off
Sheldon Street.
Above: An “iron horse” entering a
tunnel near Crown King. This was
probably an initial run, judging by the
white shirts the railroad executives
are wearing.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Below: The last Santa Fe train pulls
into the Prescott Depot in 1962.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Chapter XV ✦ 49

CHAPTER XVI
R ODEO
A rodeo horse bucking for the crowd
in traditional Frontier Days style.
COURTESY OF THE SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
“No cowboy will be entered who is not willing to wear his big hat and boots at all times. If you
are ashamed of being a cowboy, stay away from here,” was a rigid, albeit unwritten, portion of rules
for the Prescott rodeo.
In a boisterous 1866 Independence Day celebration, the more rowdy participants hit most of the
bars on Whiskey Row, then held their own contests and horse races. They concluded festivities by
firing off their guns and riding horses in and out of the stores and bars. That first Fourth of July
celebration was held when Prescott was scarcely three months old.
There were 12 contestants in the rodeo and probably some 2,000 in the audience. The soldiers
from Fort Whipple joined in the games of skill, contests, foot races, and horse races.
In the beginning the Prescott Rodeo was managed by a committee of local merchants and
professional people. In 1913 a part of the Yavapai County Chamber of Commerce branched out to
become the Yavapai County Fair Association. It wasn’t until 1924 that the word “rodeo” was used to
describe the Prescott Frontier Day celebration. Before then the rangeland fun was called Cowboy
Tournament, Wild West Show, Fiesta, Cowboy Carnival, or Rangeland Sports.
Round ups (rodeos) have been in America since Spaniards brought cattle and horses to this country
in the 1500s. Cowboys came from ranches throughout Yavapai County raring to show off skill in bronco
riding, steer roping, and cow-horse racing. There were no chutes or proper equipment for the first
rodeos; each contestant brought his own bronco, dragged it out in front of the judges’ stand, pulled a
blindfold down over the horse’s eyes, slapped on a saddle, and hopped on. When the cowboy yanked off
the blindfold, his time began. He rode until he was bucked off or the judges determined that he had
ridden long enough. Before an event started, judges instructed the cowboys to change horses. There was
no way to develop secret code of complicity between man and animal since they were new to each other.
50 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

In wild horse racing, three-man teams had only a
halter, a sixteen-foot shank rope and their
combined courage. The way things are now, the
cowboy straddles the chute and lowers himself so
he is suspended over the saddle of the horse.
When ready, he hangs on to the top of the chute
with one hand and eases his feet into the stirrups.
Then out they go into the arena.
William Bashford, A. Burmister, and Morris
Goldwater formed a committee to raise funds for
a “Cowboy Tournament”—and so was born the
Oldest Rodeo in 1888. A $125 saddle was prize
for the contestant who made the best time in
roping a steer. The celebration brought fame and
fortune to one spectacular performer “Arizona
Charlie” Meadows, who “Buffalo Bill” Cody
signed on with his Wild West Show to tour the
United States and England.
One winning contestant in the 1888 rodeo
either lost or forgot about a gold medal that he
won. It turned up in 1919 in a pile of scrap metal.
The volunteer who was working in a World War I
Aviators’ Fund drive who found it returned it to
the Prescott Frontier Days Association.
In the 1930s, before there were superstars of
the Rodeo, riders earned extra money by
working as hands on local ranches. Local
cowboys had a shot at the title right along with
the boys who toured with professional rodeo.
Rodeo medical treatment was casual in the
1930s. By the 1980s, Dr. Pat Evans and Don
Andrews had instituted the Justin Sports Medicine
Program and a mobile sports medicine system that
brings emergency help to the rodeo cowboy site.
Above: Joanie Hopman, Miss Prescott
Frontier Days queen, 2000. Note the
grand belt buckle.
COURTESY OF JIM KONECNY,
PIONEER FRONTIER DAYS, INC.
Below: The beginning of an explosive
ride as a rider hangs on for the count.
COURTESY OF JIM KONECNY,
PIONEER FRONTIER DAYS, INC.
Chapter XVI ✦ 51

Above: A young woman barrel racing
in the 1996 Rodeo.
COURTESY OF JIM KONECNY,
PIONEER FRONTIER DAYS, INC.
Below: A rider experiencing the joy of
bareback riding.
COURTESY OF JIM KONECNY,
PIONEER FRONTIER DAYS, INC.
Back in the 1920s, Prescott was known as the
“Cowboy Capital of the World,” and the rodeo
was dubbed the granddaddy of them all! The
non-profit Prescott Frontier Days celebration
incorporated civic, recreational organizations and
of course, a parade. The celebration concluded
with skyrockets booming across the Plaza.
Rodeo guys are sentimental; in 1993, Jim
Bob Custer won the saddle bronc riding event
and presented his buckle trophy to his
grandfather, Dick Tatum. “I know you were a
competitor at a lot of rodeos in Prescott, and
won a lot of money riding broncs,” said Custer.
“But in spite of all your efforts and the years you
rode, you never won a first here. I want you to
have this buckle.”
Not all the riding and roping around here
take place at rodeos. Some families still have
pot luck dinners and their own roping
competitions. Many a horseman will tell you he
was born to be a cowboy and loves to compete
just about anywhere.
The current rodeo agendum is well defined.
A stock contractor brings in all the animals—his
own and some he leases. He breeds many of the
bucking horses and bucking bulls at his ranch.
Prescott Rodeo is much more than just picking
winners. The majority of cowboys pay their
entry fees and work hard in competition but
don’t win big. Many of them have eaten a lot of
dust out at the rodeo grounds. Veteran
challengers tell how they rodeoed all day and
stayed on Whiskey Row all night. They spent
52 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

time in town rather than packing up after the
show and traveling from one rodeo to the next,
as pro riders do now. These guys are a breed
apart. The cowboys who finish in the top 15 for
an event and are invited to the National Finals
Rodeo may travel over 100,000 miles a year.
They pay their own travel expenses and entry
fees for every event in which they compete.
These are professional athletes.
Rodeo animals now are selected to do just
one event and do it expertly. Some are bred and
picked just to buck. Cowboys today may have a
special horse for heading and another for
heeling in team roping. and still another for calf
roping. These days all entrants agree to tough
waivers and releases set down by the
Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association: no
claims, demands and liabilities by a member for
indemnities and contributions arising from
property damage, personal injury and/or death
to a third party.
There is an arena dress code: all members
wear a cowboy hat, a long-sleeved cut and
sewed shirt (no knit pullovers), and cowboy
boots in the arena, with exception of clowns,
bullfighters, and barrelmen, who must wear
protective clothing appropriate to their jobs.
Conduct, speech, appearance, or lack of
financial responsibility that are significantly
detrimental to the public image, reputation,
and well being to the sport of professional
rodeo can cost a fine or an entrant being
ousted. Rodeo management has the right to
withdraw any contestant’s name and entry and
refuse to allow stock to be used for any of the
following reasons:
• Rowdyism,
• Quarrelling with judges or officials,
• Abusing livestock,
• Failure to give assistance when requested to
do so by an arena director,
• Not being ready for events when called,
• And being under influence of intoxicants, or
attempting to take unfair advantage of rules.
There were more specifics, but the final rule
said it all: “Any contestant who protests the
decision of judges, automatically disqualifies
himself. These judges are elected by contestants
and give their service gratis. Their decision must
be respected.”
Years ago, cowboys figured that the early
“Rules of Rodeo” might not prevent promoters
from taking advantage of them in tabulating
prize money. The contestants organized
their own “Cowboys’ Turtle Association.”
The name alluded to the slow-moving pace
in which things were done and how they
were willing to stick their necks out for
what they believed in. By 1928 those rules
were known as Rodeo’s Rules of Wide Fame
after much fine tuning by Lester Ruffner,
former arena director; Doc Pardee; and Grace
Sparkes, the long-time Frontier Days secretary.
This gave them a say in 1936. In 1945 the name
was changed to Rodeo Cowboy Association, and
finally, in the 1970s, the name was changed to
Magnificient Percheron horses from
Bison Ranch are honored guests at
the Rodeo.
COURTESY OF JIM KONECNY,
PIONEER FRONTIER DAYS, INC.
Chapter XVI ✦ 53

Above: Clowning around between
bullrides at the Rodeo.
COURTESY OF JIM KONECNY,
PIONEER FRONTIER DAYS, INC.
Below: A commemorative U.S. Postal
Service cancellation mark issued in
1988 to honor the hundredth
anniversary of the Prescott Frontier
Days Rodeo.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
the present-day name, the Professional Rodeo
Cowboys Association (PRCA).
The Prescott Rodeo Committee applied to the
U.S. Patent Office to have “World’s Oldest
Rodeo” registered. Service Mark #1353 477 was
issued in August, 1985. The Trivial Pursuit
game extended additional recognition with the
question “What rough-and-tumble Western
sport was first formalized in Prescott, Arizona?”
Answer: “Rodeo.”
Rodeo commemorated the one-hundred-year
anniversary in a big way. The local post office
issued a special stamp cancellation.
Bronco is defined as a wild or partly broken
horse of the Western U.S. used in rodeos (in the
mid-nineteenth century). The word comes from
Spanish, literally “rough, wild, untamed.” The
fraternal life of cowboys goes far beyond leaning
on a saloon bar. Members of the Arizona
Cowpunchers Reunion Association still hold
roping events and storytelling gatherings.
Women were featured as separate but
relatively equal rodeo participants. They
competed, independent of men, in fancy, trick
riding. Thanks to the Girls Rodeo Association,
barrel racing appeared in most rodeos by the
end of the 1940s. Women were then able to
participate in a wider variety of events. The
Rodeo Queen competition was introduced in
the late 1930s and remains a high point of the
celebration and the parade. In 1941 the
identical Baller twins won and shared the title.
Girls’ barrel racing competition started in 1959
at the Prescott rodeo and continues to be a
crowd-pleaser. All Frontier Days essentials!
Within the world of ranching, cowboys
tamed wild horses so they could be ridden to
herd cattle, round up strays, and rope cattle for
branding. Cattle roamed free, and animals from
different spreads mixed. At round up time
cowboys vied to see who could do a job best.
Rodeos were usually called roundups,
stampedes, tournaments, or fiestas. Even
people who knew nothing about horses or
cattle recognized the potential of these events
as moneymakers, tourist attractions, and
publicity generators.
The vast majority of contestants in early days
were Anglo-American cowboys. In the early 1900s
two legendary Canadian Indian cowboys—
Jackson Sundown and Tom Three Persons—
captured the Calgary and Pendleton titles. Will
Rogers, who was the son of a Cherokee rancher,
hazed for Bill Pickett, an African-American
cowboy who invented the steer-wrestling event,
also termed “bulldogging.” This required wrestling
a steer to the ground. Pickett’s signature stunt was
biting the lip of the steer as he manipulated it to
the ground. Steer wrestling starts when a steer
darts into the arena, two riders following him. The
hazer is on the opposite side of the steer and keeps
it running straight. The wrestler rides alongside
the steer, grabs him by the horns, drops off his
horse onto the steer, and throws it to the ground.
Ideally that is the way it works.
Cattle and horses have been significant in
Arizona from the time of Father Eusebio
Francisco Kino, a Spanish Jesuit priest who led
a cavalcade of animals from Mexico City into
Arizona. Bronc riding evolved from breaking
and training horses to work the cattle ranches of
the Old West. Now it is almost an art form.
54 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barnett, Franklin. These Were the Prehistoric Prescott Indians. Arizona Archaeological Society, Yavapai Chapter.
Barnett, Franklin. Viola Jimulla: The Indian Chieftess.
Born, D. E. Stories of Early Prescott. Classic Printing, 1997
Brandes, Ray. Frontier Military Posts of Arizona. Dale Stuart King, publisher.
Burkit, Jim and Bruce Hooper. Pauline Weaver: Arizona’s Foremost Mountain Man. Sierra Azul Productions, 1993.
Collins, William S. The New Deal in Arizona. Arizona State Parks, 1999.
Favour, Alpheus H. Old Bill Williams, Mountain Man. University of Oklahoma Press.
Forrest, Earle R. Arizona’s Dark & Bloody Ground. Caldwell, ID: The Caxton Printers, 1936, 1950.
Goldwater, B. M. and Jack Casserly. Goldwater. Doubleday, 1988.
Johnson, Ginger. Prehistory in the Prescott Region. 1995.
Karvitz, Robert. Healers, Hucksters & Heroes: Arizona Territory Medicine. Phoenix, AZ: McMurray Publishing, 1995.
O’Connor, Sandra Day and H. Alan Day. Lazy B. Thorndike Press, 2002.
Phillips, Melvin W., M.D. Mile Hi Docs. Prescott: M&J Publishing, 1996.
Phippen, Louise. George Phippen: The Man, The Artist.
Sayre, John W. Ghost Railroads of Central Arizona. Boulder, CO: Pruett Publising Co., 1985.
Sayre, John W.. Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix Railway. Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing Co., 1990.
The Gazette. “Shopping Around Prescott’s Plaza First 5 Years.” Sharlot Hall Museum Archives, December 1988.
Trimble, Marshall. Arizonian Stories from Old Arizona. Scottsdale, AZ: Reata Publishing.
Trimble, Marshall. In Old Arizona. Golden West Publishers, 1985.
Walker, Dale L. Rough Rider, Buckey O’Neill of Arizona. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press.
Weiner, Melissa Ruffner. Prescott: A Pictorial History. Donning Co. Publishers, 1981
Williams, Sally Munds. History of Valuable Pioneers of the State of Arizona.
Wright, Barton and Marnie Gaede and Marc Gaede. The Hopi Photographs, Kate Cory 1905-1912. University of New Mexico Press.
Yavapai Cow Bells. Echoes of the Past, Tales of Old Yavapai in Arizona. 1955, 1973, 1996.
Yoder, Phillip D. The History of Fort Whipple (thesis). University of Arizona, 1961.
One of Prescott’s many beautiful,
historic houses.
COURTESY OF MAGDA GREGORY.
Bibliography ✦ 55

From top to bottom:
Arizona’s Christmas city glows with
brilliant adornment in the Plaza.
COURTESY OF THE PRESCOTT
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
Folks enjoy the picnic area of the
Plaza in spring as trees begin to bud.
COURTESY OF THE PRESCOTT
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
An annual Christmas parade float
passes parade-watchers who have
brought chairs for viewing comfort.
COURTESY OF THE PRESCOTT
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE.
56 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

SHARING THE HERITAGE
historic profiles of businesses, organizations,
and families that have contributed to
the development and economic base of
Prescott and Yavapai County
Yavapai Regional Medical Center.......................................................58
The M3 Companies..........................................................................60
Prescott Lakes ................................................................................61
The American Ranch .......................................................................62
Prescott Chamber of Commerce .........................................................63
Roxie Webb Securities Management, Inc. ............................................64
Golden Insurance Services................................................................66
Haley Construction Company............................................................68
Northcentral University ...................................................................70
The Fain Family & Fain Signature Group ...........................................72
Townsend Construction, Inc. .............................................................74
SpringHill Suites ............................................................................76
MacMillan Construction...................................................................78
The Palace Hotel & The Jersey Saloon
Relocation Specialists, Llc. ...........................................................80
Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe ...........................................................82
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University................................................84
Red Arrow Real Estate .....................................................................85
AGR Paving & Sealing, Inc...............................................................86
Prescott Brewing Company ...............................................................87
R. W. Turner & Sons Pump & Windmill Company.................................88
Tim’s Buick-Pontiac-GMC-Toyota ......................................................89
Yavapai Title Agency .......................................................................90
Brown & Brown Insurance ................................................................91
Hampton Funeral Home ...................................................................92
Hotel St. Michael............................................................................93
KPPV 107.6 FM “The Mix”
KQNA 1130 AM CNN Headline News Radio .....................................94
Prescott Newspapers, Inc. ................................................................95
Hampton Inn of Prescott ..................................................................96
Yavapai Block & Precast ..................................................................97
Murphy, Lutey, Schmitt & Fuchs........................................................98
El Chaparral..................................................................................99
Check Realty, Inc. .........................................................................100
Valley Dental Equipment Company...................................................100
Trisha’s Li’l Slow Foods Cafe ..........................................................101
Prescott Samaritan Communities of Care ..........................................101
KNOT Radio.................................................................................102
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 57

YAVAPAI
REGIONAL
MEDICAL
CENTER
Above: Yavapai Regional Medical
Center is located at 1003 Willow
Creek Road in Prescott.
Below: The Cardiac Catheterization
Laboratory is a prime example of the
state-of-the-art healthcare offered at
YRMC.
“On October 10, 1942, it was decided to
move at once to alter the Jefferson School into a
hospital relying on local resources for support.
The War effort was taking medical and surgical
supplies, hospital furnishings, building materials
and manpower. Would it be possible to overcome
this handicap? Salesmen from surgical
supply houses scoured the country. ‘The last
operating table in the U.S. was purchased for
$1,200 by a Yavapai rancher. The doctors also
quickly bought needed items. A commercial
kitchen stove was brought in from a defunct
mine–courtesy of the bank that held the mortgage.
Committees worked to raise cash. Two
ranchers offered $10,000 each, if townspeople
would match the sum. It was done. Finally, on
March 1, 1943, Prescott Community Hospital
opened its doors. The first baby was born that
evening. Governor Sidney Osborn ‘hoped that
the community would become united as one in
this hospital effort.’”—Florence Yount, M.D.,
first female physician in Prescott.
Since being incorporated in April 1942
Prescott’s hometown hospital has seen a lot of
change. What started in the old Jefferson School
building is today located in a multistory, stateof-the-art
facility on Willow Creek Road.
Prescott Community Hospital is now recognized
nationally by a new name: Yavapai Regional
Medical Center. Hospital services have grown to
match the healthcare needs of YRMC’s communities.
And even greater changes are planned for
the future.
Key to these plans is adherence to the YRMC
Total Healing Environment philosophy, where
the indivisible relationship between body, mind
and human spirit is recognized.
58 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

The cornerstone of the twenty-first century
Yavapai Regional Medical Center is a Healing
Team led by a community-based board of
trustees, a group of experienced administrators
and the scores of concerned physicians in
multiple specialties who form the YRMC
Medical Staff. Complementing this leadership
are the skills, training and competence of hundreds
of professional nurses, therapists, technicians,
support personnel and volunteers.
The technology side of YRMC is no less
impressive. A 135-bed, full-service hospital in
Prescott–YRMC West–is home to an acclaimed
cardiac cath lab and angiography service, stateof-the-art
imaging services and a full spectrum
of healthcare options that range from preventive
medicine to family-centered obstetrics. A 24-
hour emergency department with Fast Track
capabilities, inpatient and outpatient surgical
services and respected Partners for Healthy
Students program all contribute to YRMC’s
important healthcare presence.
In Prescott Valley, the YRMC Del E. Webb
Outpatient Center opened in 1997 to provide
the area’s growing population with imaging
services, preventive medicine and physical rehabilitation.
YRMC’s Hospice and Home Health
services are also located here, along with office
space for private physicians. In 2002 YRMC, in
a joint venture with community partners,
opened the YRMC Health Services Building
adjacent to the outpatient center. This was a
forerunner of things to come.
With an eye on meeting future healthcare
needs, Yavapai Regional Medical Center
announced in the late 1990s that it would be
building an additional hospital–YRMC East–in
Prescott Valley. Because of the complexity of the
project, planning alone would take several years
but by 2002 it had been determined that the 50-
bed facility would initially offer an emergency
department, surgery, laboratory services, cardiopulmonary
and neurology services, radiology
and various support services, with other services
to be added as required.
Yavapai Regional Medical Center is a not-forprofit
hospital that relies solely on patient revenues
and community support for all of its funding.
No taxes have ever been levied to fund YRMC
programs or pay for capital improvements and/or
expansion projects. Revenue left over after the
hospital’s expenses are paid is reinvested to
enhance patient care and services, reduce debt
and fund future needs. There are no out-of-state
corporations or private shareholders involved
with YRMC–the only “shareholders” are the
people and the communities the hospital serves.
At Yavapai Regional Medical Center, healing
is more than a job, more than a business. It’s a
calling . . . and a calling of which all hospital
employees are proud.
Yavapai Regional Medical Center is located at
1003 Willow Creek Road in Prescott and on the
Internet at www.yrmc.org.
Above: YRMC’s Pendleton Center for
Health and Fitness combines exercise
and health education with an upbeat,
friendly environment.
Below: YRMC is committed to a “Total
Healing Environment” which
incorporates the indivisible
relationship between the body, mind,
and human spirit.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 59

THE M 3
COMPANIES
Above: The Prescott National Bank
in 1903.
COURTESY OF: SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
Below: The partners of The M3
Companies, Jeff Davis (left) and Bill
Brownlee (right), standing in
front of the Prescott National Bank
building in 2003.
In the mid-1980s, while working on a
development project in Phoenix, Arizona, Jeffrey
A. Davis and William I. Brownlee realized they
were interested in walking the same business path
and that together they had the expertise to create a
successful partnership. Brownlee who had formed
The M3 Companies in 1981, had extensive
knowledge in the construction industry and a keen
ability to bring together investor capital. Davis had
years of experience in the real estate business and
was a licensed real estate broker and building
contractor. When Brownlee asked Davis to join
him as an equal partner in his company, the
beginning of a successful and adventurous
business partnership was set into motion.
Davis and Brownlee began by developing
upscale master planned residential communities.
Their vision grew out of a realization of a trend
among retirees who were searching for small,
rural communities in which to live that were also
within driving distance of metropolitan areas.
With Prescott less than two hours from Phoenix
and with its natural beauty and temperate, fourseason
climate, Brownlee and Davis found the
perfect place to manifest their vision.
M3’s initial project was a residential retirement
community called Victorian Estates. M3 tested its
master plan vision on a small scale by creating a
gated, age-restricted community, which includes a
community center and trails connecting to a park
in the center of the community.
M3’s next project was an eleven-hundred-acre
development inside the City of Prescott called
Prescott Lakes. Prescott Lakes is a mixed-use
residential and commercial master-planned
community that includes every aspect of
residential housing, from luxury apartments to
high-end, million-dollar custom homes. This
community’s amenities include a 14,000-squarefoot
athletic club, an 18-hole Hale Irwin Signature
golf course, parks, and dozens of miles of trails.
Then came American Ranch, M3’s beautiful and
unique creation of a master-planned community
geared toward horse lovers and hikers. American
Ranch consists of 616 acres that include over ten
miles of community trails, a ranch camp,
community center and equestrian center.
The corporate headquarters of M3 is located
inside the historic Prescott National Bank building
in downtown Prescott. Upon its acquisition in
1998, M3 completed a full restoration, replicating
the building’s design elements as they were at the
turn of the century. The bank lobby was restored
to its original beauty and today it is being utilized
as a marketing center for M3’s projects.
Davis, an honors graduate from the Indiana
College of Business, participates in the
entitlement process and manages the marketing
and brokerage of M3’s projects. He also manages
the homebuilding business. Jeff and Laura, his
wife of more than twenty years, have four
children—Jennifer, Justin, Spencer, and Preston.
Brownlee, a native of Colorado who has
been involved in the construction industry since
his youth, has primary responsibilities within M3
in the development planning and management,
entitlements, and business and financial planning
areas. Bill and his wife, Jeanne, are the proud
parents of two children—Alex and Jenna.
Over the years, M3 has participated in the
community by becoming members of the
Prescott Chamber of Commerce, the Prescott
Downtown Partnership, Sharlot Hall Museum,
and the Phippen Museum, to name a few.
60 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

PRESCOTT
LAKES
Prescott Lakes is a master-planned, residential
and commercial mixed-use community developed
by The M3 Companies. It consists of more than
eleven hundred acres, which has been designed to
provide a connectedness between homes and
commercial and recreational amenities. Within
Prescott Lakes are high-end luxury apartments,
condominiums, patio homes, custom home sites
for custom home development ranging from
$200,000 to the million-dollar range, office parks,
a spectacular Hale Irwin Signature championship
golf course and a beautiful community athletic
club for the community’s enjoyment.
The Prescott Lakes project started in July
1998. Initial sales exceeded all expectations
with more than 300 custom home lots sold
within the first 18 months. Since that time,
residential and commercial sales have made
Prescott Lakes an unqualified success.
While developing the Prescott Lakes project,
petroglyph rock art was discovered, and M3, in
conjunction with the Yavapai Indian Tribe and the
Sharlot Hall Museum contracted with local
professors Edward and Diane Stasack to preserve
all rock art that was subject to destruction through
construction and development. The Stasacks
catalogued and inventoried over 250 boulders,
which were then relocated and displayed
throughout seven different petroglyph parks.
These parks were specifically developed in
partnership between the Prescott Lakes development
and the City of Prescott. All seven parks in
Prescott Lakes are open to the general public.
Prescott Lakes is conveniently located just
three miles from historic downtown Prescott, and
one mile from the Prescott Gateway Mall
developed by Westcor.
Above: The waterfall at the
entrance to the Prescott Lakes masterplanned
community
Bottom, left: Jeff Davis (left) and
rock art experts, Ed and Diane
Stasack, who directed the
petroglyph preservation program
at Precott Lakes.
Bottom, right: The view of Hole #16
at the Prescott Lakes Hale Irwin
Signature golf course.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 61

THE AMERICAN
RANCH
Above: American Ranch at the base of
Granite Mountain Wilderness Area.
Below: The American Ranch
Stage Stop in 1884.
COURTESY OF: SHARLOT HALL MUSEUM.
The American Ranch was founded in
1865 by Jefferson Harrison Lee and his wife,
Agnes, who were pioneers of the Prescott
Territory. It was acquired by the Lees for a sixshooter
and a bag of bullets from a frontiersman
anxious to get to California during the gold
rush. The Lees created the American Ranch
stage stop, which provided a last chance
for food and lodging before the journey
into Prescott.
The American Ranch is now an upscale
equestrian and family master-planned community
developed by The M3 Companies, allowing
for only 210 residents on over 600 acres of
pristine ranch property. The American Ranch
sits adjacent to thousands of acres of Prescott
National Forest land and the Granite Mountain
Wilderness Area.
Community amenities include a fully
staffed equestrian center that provides horse
training, horseback riding lessons, boarding
and clinics. The 20-acre community center
includes a three-acre lake; a 4,000-squarefoot
ranch house with a sports lounge and
billiard and fitness rooms; a swimming
pool; and volleyball, basketball, and
tennis courts. The ranch camp includes
a one-acre multi-sports field with tepees
and fire pits for resident camping and
tree forts and rope swings for children
of all ages.
There are ten miles of community
trails for hiking and riding, in addition
to the endless miles of hiking and riding
trails available in the adjacent Prescott
National Forest and Granite Mountain
Wilderness Area. Residents have easy
access to these public trails thanks to
an arrangement made by The M3
Companies with the U.S. Forest Service
to connect the American Ranch community
trail system directly to the Forest
Service trails.
62 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

For over ninety years the Prescott Chamber
of Commerce has served the community by
welcoming visitors to its doors and promoting
its members and their services. From its small
beginning in 1911 to its current, newly
remodeled home in the historic 1894 firehouse
and jail at 117 West Goodwin Street, the
Chamber has grown to over 1,050
members and a full staff of employees
and volunteers.
In 1911 the Chamber (then known as
the Yavapai Chamber of Commerce)
opened an office in the Bank of America
basement. During the next fifteen years
it engaged in a number of activities,
including purchasing acreage, which
was subdivided and sold as lots. The
Chamber was also instrumental in
building the Jerome Highway (now SR
89A) between 1917 and 1921.
As the years went by, the Prescott
Chamber of Commerce continued to
grow in number of members and extent
of community involvement. Through its
efforts the Ernest A. Love Airport was
established in 1930. In 1932 the
Reconstruction Finance Corporation
went into effect and the Chamber
handled all unemployment in Yavapai
County for almost one year. Each month
approximately fourteen hundred men
were employed to work on projects such
as Thumb Butte Road, the Pioneers
Home, and Iron Springs Road.
In the 1930s the Chamber supported
historic Fort Whipple continuing its
services as a U.S. Government medical
center and encouraged Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University to open a
facility adjacent to Prescott’s airport.
Throughout the years Prescott’s
Chamber of Commerce has worked
diligently to help miners, farmers,
ranchers, and business owners become
established and flourish. It has worked
with and supported the Frontier Days
Celebration and Rodeo and the
Northern Arizona State Fair and has
helped and encouraged the Yavapai
Native American tribe in its efforts to
grow and prosper.
Chamber leaders have been and continue to
be outstanding citizens of the community. They
see the need and value of giving back to the
community in which they live. As it did in 1911,
the Prescott Chamber of Commerce continues to
serve the community and its needs through its
leaders, staff, and friendly crew of volunteers.
PRESCOTT
CHAMBER OF
COMMERCE
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 63

ROXIE WEBB
SECURITIES
MANAGEMENT,
INC.
Above: Eunice and Roxie Webb, Jr.
Below: Donna Curtis and
Roxie Webb, Jr.
The first adventurous step that Roxie Webb’s
family took into Arizona history began with the
arrival of Webb’s great-grandmother, Kathryn
Dunning, who traveled to Prescott by covered
wagon in 1879. Her diary, given to the Museum
of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff, tells of making
their last camp at Granite Dells, just a few miles
from Fort Whipple and Prescott. Settlers posted
sentries to warn of hostile Indians in the still
wild Arizona territory.
“Kate” became the new schoolmistress at the
Prescott Free Academy, Arizona’s first graded
public school. She married Amos Adams of the
successful Adams and Clark Lumber Company,
located on Cortez Street, across from the present
Murphy’s restaurant. Kate and Amos had five
children, and to help care for them, a young
woman named Sharlot Hall came to live at the
family home on the southeast corner of East
Gurley Street and Mount Vernon. Hall would
later become famous as a writer/poet and
territorial historian.
Kate’s daughter, Helen, born in 1885, was an
educator, musician, and local basketball coach.
She married George Colton in 1906, and in
1913, they moved to the Grand Canyon where
George was in the Indian trading business at
Verkamp’s. Still open today, it is a short walk
from the landmark El Tovar Hotel. Helen
became the Canyon’s first Justice of the Peace.
Rockwell (Roxie) Webb, Sr., left Texas in the
1920s, to represent the Goodyear Tire and
Rubber Company in Northern Arizona. In May
1929, while having lunch with a tire dealer in
Williams, he met the lovely Harriette Colton.
64 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Two months later they married, and often
traveled together over the dirt roads of
Roxie’s territory—from Kingman to
Winslow to the White Mountains and
back again, measuring distances not in
miles but in the number of flat tires.
In 1935, tired of life on the road, Roxie,
Sr., bought the Ford dealership in
Prescott, which he successfully operated
for twenty-five years. He sold Webb
Motors in 1960 and in 1961 opened a
stock brokerage office in Prescott.
His son, Roxie Webb, Jr., attended the
Virginia Military Institute, received a B.A.
in English from the University of Arizona
and attended Arizona State University for
graduate studies in finance. Roxie was a
“Distinguished Military Graduate” in the
Army R.O.T.C. program at the University
of Arizona and he accepted a commission
in the United States Army Signal Corps,
serving as a contracting officer in the field of
electronic warfare.
With his tour of duty completed, Roxie, Jr.,
joined the family business in 1968. After five years
of growth, joining the Midwest Stock Exchange
and opening an office in Sedona, Roxie, Jr.,
decided to change the direction of the firm from
commission-driven to fee-based. “I never liked
the conflict of interest between stockbrokers and
their customers,” said Roxie, Jr. “The size of the
commission can have a lot to do with the
investment advice given by the salesperson.
It was risky to move to a fee-based company,
especially when your firm is established,
respected, and prospering. But the choice
was a good one.”
In 1979, Roxie, Jr., decided the time
was right to create a hometown bank, one
that would be more responsive and offer
more personalized services, especially to
the business community. In 1981 when so
many banks nationwide were floundering,
Chairman/CEO Roxie, Jr., and a board of
thirteen other co-founders opened The
Bank of Prescott. Its resounding success
led to The Bank of Prescott being acquired
in 1987 by The Arizona Bank.
In 1981, Roxie, Jr., and two members
of the Bank of Prescott Board of Directors
decided to purchase a company that was
making a product now known as Ester C. Ester
C, a molecularly different and patented dietary
supplement, has been a national and
international success. The company was
successfully sold in 1997.
The Roxie Webb family has been managing
securities’ portfolios for forty-two years. The
goal of Roxie Webb Securities Management,
Inc., is to serve a limited number of clients well
and to keep those clients over the long haul.
Above: Roxie Webb, Sr. (left),
Jeannine Foley, and Roxie Webb, Jr.,
in 1973.
Below: This Adams and Clark Lumber
Company in downtown Prescott, c.
1900. Amos Adams (right) is the
great-grandfather of Roxie Webb, Jr.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 65

GOLDEN
INSURANCE
SERVICES
Our commitment—one hundred
percent service. We work for you.
Yvonne, Jo, Shauna, Marci, and Tony.
Marci Golden and Tony Winkelman
moved to Prescott in 1982 because they wanted
to raise their children in a friendly, small town
environment. Marci had been working as a math
teacher and Tony had run his own business for
a number of years, but when they arrived in
Prescott, they became inspired to follow a new
direction. Fate intervened in the form of an
insurance professional who told Marci that the
insurance business could use someone who has
the ability to teach senior consumers what they
need to know about Medicare. Marci was drawn
to the idea. She was not new to the healthcare
field, having worked as a researcher for six years
at the UCLA Medical Center. With her
educational background and Tony’s business
acumen, the two realized that they could open
an insurance agency with consumer education
and client service as the foundation.
The two studied industry publications,
attended meetings of healthcare professionals
and went to seminars that focused on health
insurance and Medicare. They made it their
business to become thoroughly familiar with the
local community and what it had to offer seniors
in the form of nursing homes, home care,
assisted living and adult day care facilities. In
1986 Tony and Marci formed Golden Insurance
Services bringing health insurance to seniors by
primarily focusing on Medicare supplements
and long-term care policies. Tony says, “in
today’s complex society, everyone needs
specialists to make life easier.”
As a public service, Marci began speaking to
several local organizations and groups—the
Yavapai College Learning Institute, the
Alzheimer’s Association, NARFE (National
66 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Association of Retired Federal Employees),
Prescott Area Leadership, the University of
Arizona Extension, AARP’s Widowed Person’s
Service and many local service clubs. Since
1990 she has been teaching a non-credit class at
Yavapai College, through which she provides
information about Medicare and long-term care
coverage: what to look for in a policy, what
questions to ask, how to compare policies and
about new laws. One of the ways Marci helps
those who attend her lectures and classes is by
providing them with a checklist of questions
that can be used when looking at different
insurance programs.
In keeping with their philosophy, Marci and
Tony have also worked to bring education to the
insurance community of Prescott through aiding
the formation of local chapters of the National
Association of Life Underwriters and the
National Association of Health Underwriters,
two organizations that provide continuing
training for industry professionals.
From the beginning, Marci and Tony chose to
be independent brokers so that they could focus
on what’s best for their clients and doing so has
made their business a resounding success. Word
of mouth about the knowledge, integrity and
caring service Golden Insurance provides has
spread and has kept their business growing
throughout the Tri-City community.
Golden Insurance Services’ highly
knowledgeable staff is efficient and thoughtful
in their handling of all of the clients’
paperwork. “Our current employees are the
best group of people we’ve ever worked with,”
Marci says. “Recently one of our staff went to a
client’s house after work because the client
couldn’t understand her bills and was unable
to come into the office because she had broken
her pelvis. All of our employees are good
listeners and caring individuals.”
The public response to this level of service
has been overwhelmingly positive as evidenced
by the number of client referrals and letters of
appreciation they receive (as well as candy and
flowers). A few years ago a competitor told one
of their clients, “Oh, they’re just a Ma and Pa
outfit.” “We weren’t offended,” Marci said, “It’s
what we are…friendly service backed up by upto-date
research and in-depth knowledge. Our
motto is, “We Work For You.”
Marci and Tony look forward to many more
years of working and living in Prescott, the
community they love—everyone’s hometown.
We file your claims and follow up. We
take care of the paper work for you.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 67

HALEY
CONSTRUCTION
COMPANY
Above: Wichahpa House. National
Association of Home Builders “Best in
American Living” Award Winner.
Below: Haley Construction Company
founder Jim Haley started the
company in 1954 in Globe, Arizona.
The story of Haley Construction Company
began in 1954 when Jim and Fran Haley bought
out Jim’s partner and moved the family from
Phoenix to Globe, Arizona. Three years and 150
homes later, when the Miami Copper Mine, the
leading source of Globe’s financial prosperity,
closed down, the Haley’s made the decision to
move their family and their company to Winslow.
They spent the next three years building homes
and developing subdivisions in the Winslow and
Holbrook areas. But the future of Haley
Construction was to lead the family to relocate to
the growing city of Prescott. The year was 1960.
In the early years in Prescott, Haley
Construction Company became the exclusive
builder for the Country Club Park subdivisions
in Prescott’s Thumb Butte area. During the 1960s,
Jim continued to build in Prescott, while starting
a branch operation in Kingman, to which he
commuted weekly in his Cessna airplane. As his
sons, Bill and Tom, grew closer to college age, Jim
phased out the Kingman operation and
centralized Haley Construction Company’s
primary operations in Prescott, focusing on
custom residential and commercial construction.
Today, Haley Construction Company remains
one of the most respected names in construction
in the Prescott area. Owned and operated by
Tom and Bill Haley since the mid ’70s, the
company is a state-of-the-art construction
operation. Chief Financial Officer and Vice-
President Bill Haley graduated from the ASU
School of Engineering in 1970 with a specialty in
Structural Engineering. He began his career as an
engineer with the Arizona Highway Department
and later advanced to the firm of GJK Engineers.
There he was responsible for complete structural
design for all types of buildings. President and
Chief Operating Officer Tom Haley also attended
ASU, graduating in 1972 with a degree in
Construction Engineering. Upon graduation,
Tom moved back to Prescott and joined his Dad
at Haley Construction, where he was placed in
charge of field operations. In August 1978, Bill
decided that he too wanted to join the family
business. Once Bill arrived, Jim retired and
68 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

transferred ownership of Haley Construction
Company to his sons.
Tom and Bill believe in the team concept.
They manage the company as a team and they
structure their jobs as a team from inception to
move in. Most jobs are negotiated with a design
build approach, in which Haley Construction
Company works with the owner and the
architect to achieve the project that fulfills the
owner’s desires functionally, aesthetically, and
within the given budget. The team concept
continues beyond design and pricing as the
projects go into construction, managed by the
company’s own payroll forces to optimize
supervision and maximize management control
of the job. Tom runs field operations and overall
company scheduling, circulating among the
jobs under construction, coordinating with the
job superintendents, and troubleshooting any
problems that may occur in the field. Bill is in
charge of all value engineering, estimating and
cost control. He answers plan interpretation and
structural engineering questions that come in
from field operations to the office.
Hundreds of satisfied clients and successfully
completed commercial and residential buildings
in the Prescott area attest to the success of the
Haley’s concepts in construction. Such projects
include the recently completed York Motors
Dealership; luxury homes in the Hassayampa
Village Golf Community, High Valley Ranch,
The Ranch at Prescott, and many other
residential areas. Commercial projects also
include Kokopelli Eye Care and Surgery Center;
Hicks Dental Offices; additions to Washington
School, Miller Valley School, Prescott High
School and Embry Riddle Aeronautical
University; dormitory, kitchen and dining
facilities for Sky Y Camp, Willow Springs Girl
Scout Camp, Chapel Rock Church Camp and
the Chauncey Ranch, and many renovations to
historical downtown buildings. As Prescott
history continues, so does the tradition of fine
building with Haley Construction Company.
“There is no doubt,” said Bill, “this company has
touched the history of Prescott.”
Above: York Motors Dodge, Chrysler,
Jeep Dealership, completed in 2002.
Below: Bill (left) and Tom (right)
Haley, owners of Haley Construction
Company since 1978 pictured on the
grounds of the current business office
established in Prescott in 1960.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 69

NORTHCENTRAL
UNIVERSITY
Above: Northcentral University is
located at 505 West Whipple Street in
Prescott, Arizona.
Below: Dr. Donald Hecht, president
of NCU.
“The ideal learning situation is [a renowned
teacher] at one end of the log and a motivated
student at the other end.” Former U.S. President
James Garfield, statement made at a Williams
College Alumni meeting in 1871.
The ideal learning situation is obviously not
a new concept, but how it is applied has
certainly changed over the years as the Internet
has replaced that nineteenth century “log.” This
is evidenced by the development of distancelearning
education in the 1990s, and at
Northcentral University (NCU) in Prescott, this
paradigm is being harnessed with vigor.
Since 1996, NCU has been devoting one
hundred percent of itself to distance-learning
education and today is on the leading edge. It
offers interesting and challenging degree
programs to adult “Learners” around the world.
Learners can obtain a bachelor, master, or
doctoral degree in Psychology or Business &
Technology Management. By the end of 2003,
Learners will also have the option of seeking a
masters or doctorate in Education with focuses
on education administration and education
leadership.
There are absolutely no residency
requirements at NCU. All coursework is done
completely through the Internet, in the comfort
of the Learner’s own surroundings, and at their
convenience. In fact, NCU is the first university
in the country to be regionally accredited and to
make this type of learning environment available,
especially to those seeking doctoral degrees.
NCU prides itself on being a geographically
diverse community focused on the success of its
students, known as “Learners.” Learners join
NCU online from all over the United States and
countries such as Canada, Japan, Australia,
Lebanon, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and
Jamaica, to name only a few.
From enrollment through graduation, there
is a concentrated interest in and individualized
attention to Learners. Throughout their contact
with NCU:
• Academic advisors guide them through their
degree programs, coordinating degree plan
requirements, course requests, and academic
progress issues.
• Highly qualified faculty mentors are assigned
for each course to provide Learners one-onone
support and communication that is
necessary to meet their learning objectives and
70 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

acquire a degree. This personal interaction
is a matter of policy at NCU because personal
contact is a vital factor contributing to
Learner success.
• A Learner affairs advisor supports Learners
with the University’s distance learning process,
monitors their progress to ensure success, and
helps with non-academic matters.
Learners are also encouraged to take an
active role in their learning by bringing their
experiences, knowledge, and individual needs
into courses. NCU wants learning to be alive
and relevant to personal and professional lives,
meaningful to careers and needs, and above all,
interesting and challenging for the Learner.
NCU offers the highest quality program
content and service to its Learners, yet
understands that, for Learners who want to get
ahead in their professions and careers,
education must be affordable. Therefore, NCU’s
tuition and fees are comparatively lower than
other leading distance-learning universities. It
also offers convenient payment plans for
Learner’s to avoid debt. And, with no residency
requirements, Learners do not have to incur
travel or residential costs as expected at other
universities.
“We are unique,” said Dr. Donald Hecht,
president of NCU. “We are setting a standard for
distance learning by providing affordable,
innovative, and challenging educational
opportunities for the motivated adult Learner.
We truly live by our trademarked motto ‘We put
people first in distance learning.’”
Northcentral University is a global
educational institution serving the entire world
from its headquarters in Prescott, Arizona,
U.S.A. For more information, visit Northcentral
University on the Internet at www.ncu.edu.
Above: A group of graduating
NCU Learners.
Below: Learn in the comfort of your
home or office at your convenience.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 71

THE FAIN
FAMILY &
FAIN
SIGNATURE
GROUP
Five generations of the Fain family have made
their mark on Arizona’s history. William M. Fain
came from Kentucky, and Cary Burch, a
Pennsylvania Dutch girl, traveled by sailing sloop
around the Horn to San Francisco. The two
married in Tonopah, Nevada, in 1867, and seven
years later, migrated to Arizona in a covered
wagon across the Great Plains. William had fifty
cents in his pocket when they arrived at Camp
Sandy (now Camp Verde). He cut hoe grass along
the Verde River for the cavalry until he had
enough capital to purchase a small ranch on Oak
Creek. With thrift, hard work and a large family,
his ranch grew into the country that is now called
Sedona, Fain Mountain and Fain Springs.
Granville (Dan) Fain was born in Cornville in
1879. In 1902, Dan married Mildred Back,
whose father owned a ranch in the upper Verde
Valley. During his lifetime, Dan would operate
and own seventy-six ranches and brands
throughout Central Arizona, making him the
largest local rancher in the history of the Central
Arizona Territory and the early years of
statehood. In 1918 he founded the “Rafter
Eleven” ranch, which was situated in Lonesome
Valley east of Prescott. Dan was a well-respected
and widely known cowman until he pulled off
his last wet saddle blanket in his eighty-first year.
Truly, he was one of the last and perhaps the best
of the “loose-reign” cowboys of the open range.
Norman Fain was born in 1907 in Camp
Verde but moved with his family to Prescott after
he had completed the sixth grade. In college, he
became the undefeated, light-heavyweight
boxing champ of the seven southwestern states
before graduating from Stanford in 1928. In the
fall of that year, he married Johnie Lee Parsons,
his former high school sweetheart. Norman
bought one-half interest in an outfit on
Spring Creek near Sedona and ran his father’s
Diamond S allotment between Camp Verde and
Cottonwood. From 1941 to 1946, Norman Fain
served three terms in the Arizona State Senate
and sponsored the Arizona Right-to-Work Bill.
He was a leader in the Arizona cattle industry
and the business community. He served on the
boards of directors of the Valley National Bank,
Arizona Public Service and Marcus Lawrence
Hospital. He pioneered the development of
citrus groves on the Yuma Mesa and spearheaded
the development of the Southwest Salt Company.
In recognition of his accomplishments and
decades of exemplary service, Norman Fain
received the coveted “Spirit of Arizona” award
from the Arizona State Senate and an honorary
Doctorate of Humane Letters Degree from
Arizona State University. The terms “leader,”
“statesman,” “cowman,” “farmer” and
“businessman” all fit the mold of Norman Fain, a
man of common sense to an uncommon degree.
72 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Bill Fain was raised on the Rafter Eleven and
had a vision that someday, the ranch would
outgrow Prescott. The concept was, “There is
more money in people than in livestock.” After
graduation from the University of Arizona in
1960, he married Nancy Lee Williams. Bill and
Nancy ran the cow outfit at the Rafter Eleven,
and over the next ten years, established their
family of four. Norman and Bill founded the
Shamrock Water Company, and Bill, with a
group of local business and professional people,
also developed the Prescott Country Club.
During Prescott Valley’s formative years, Bill and
his partner of fifteen years, Bob Pavlich, brought
Prescott Valley more than one hundred new
business ventures and thousands of jobs to the
community. The Fain family continues its legacy
of ranching and public service with an eye
toward balanced economic growth. “Our
greatest resource,” said Bill Fain, “is the people
we work with and the community we serve.”
Now a new generation of Fains has formed
the Fain Signature Group to build a vibrant
downtown community in Prescott Valley and
to further expand the job base to benefit
the community.
The Fain family has a tradition of giving back to their community and state:
• Dan Fain: 640 acres to the City of Prescott for a municipal airport, Love Field.
• Mildred Fain: Montezuma Well & Museum to the State of Arizona for an Arizona State Monument.
• Norman and Johnie Fain: One hundred acres to the Town of Prescott Valley, “Fain Park.” It is home of historical landmarks:
• Barlow-Massicks Castle: An eighteen century Victorian home built in 1890.
• One-half mile of streambed and lake with a fifty-five-foot high cement dam that was used by Fitzmaurice & Savage in
hydraulic gold mining and dredging Lynx Creek placer.
• Fitzmaurice Ruins: A thirty-five-room pueblo and outposts dated to 1050 A.D. by the University of Arizona.
And the family is committed to building a bright and prosperous future.
• The Prescott Valley Downtown Master Plan, which includes an entertainment center consisting of a theater, restaurants, food
courts, and specialty retail shops and office space.
• The new Granville planned residential community will have more than three thousand homes to be constructed over the next
decade
• Big Sky Industrial Park will help to accommodate the expansion of a diversified job base for the community.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 73

Above: Jim and Elise Townsend at
a work site.
Below: Townsend Construction’s
model home.
TOWNSEND CONSTRUCTION, INC.
Townsend Construction can design your new
home, draft the plans, and oversee every aspect of
building it from pre- to post-construction because
all the experts a homebuyer might need have been
brought together under one roof. Townsend
Construction’s ability to meet the needs of so
many people has made it a welcome presence in
the Tri-City area. “Whether you are a construction
company or a restaurant, to succeed you have to
find your niche,” said Elise Townsend, president
and owner of Townsend Construction. “You also
have to care about making people happy.”
Elise Townsend, a female builder, is a rarity
in the construction industry. “I love all the little
challenges,” she said, “and I love proving that I
can build high-quality homes for folks in the
Tri-City area. My philosophy is ‘Let’s do it right
the first time.’ Townsend Construction,
believes that communication and superior
customer relations are vital for success.
Throughout the building process, frequent
communication with the homebuyer, as well as
progressive organizational meetings are
essential. “We want to build what you want,”
said Elise, “not what we want.”
Elise’s honest work ethic came from growing
up in a loving, hardworking family in Indiana
with a father who was a commercial electrical
contractor. From an early age, Elise worked
hands-on with her father learning about
construction. After college, Elise worked for a
large hotel corporation as a field trainer for
quality control and customer relations. Elise’s
construction background was valuable because
she oversaw the refurbishing of old hotels that
had been sold to other companies. In time, she
left the large corporation and returned to her
roots in the construction industry.
While in Indiana, she met her future
husband, Jim, who was a dry-wall contractor.
They were married, began raising a family and
since Jim was an Arizona native, eventually they
made their way to Prescott. Elise worked for a
local construction company for a while and then
decided the best way to use her talents was by
creating her own company.
Townsend Construction began building
homes in 2000. In addition to custom-built
homes, nearly forty-five percent of Townsend
homes are speculative homes built especially for
homebuyers who want to purchase a house that
is a month or so away from completion. “But
these are not cookie-cutter homes,” said Elise.
“No two houses ever look the same way, because
in a ‘spec’ house, I get to put ‘Townsend’ into it.
I don’t do froufrou,” she said. “Our houses are
very functional.”
74 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Elise Townsend explains that except for the
Townsend sign, you can’t tell a Townsend home
from the outside. “But when they walk in,” said
Elise, “they can tell. I would say that eighty
percent of the women who walk into our
houses make the comment that a woman had
something to do with the house. They know
because of the little extra details. It’s as simple
as: Does this place feel like a house or a home?
Can you load the dishwasher from the sink
without having to go to the other side of the
room? Is there a pantry?”
Within two years, Townsend Construction
moved into its own building in the Prescott
Airpark. “I feel truly blessed,” said Elise. “We’ve
got wonderful people working here—over two
hundred fifty-eight years of experience under
the roof of this business in accounting, sales,
drawing...in life! It’s not easy to put together a
group of people and create a great management
team. I don’t feel like I manage this company. I
feel that I am one of the key players along with
thirty other people who make this work.”
Elise is proud to be a local builder and an
active part of the Tri-City community. Elise and
Jim, parents of four children, participate in
educating local youth at high school career
days. Their message to young people is “You can
do anything you set your mind to.”
Above: Cherry cabinets bring out the
elegance in this kitchen.
Left: An architectural photograph of
hallway and light fixtures.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 75

SPRINGHILL
SUITES
Right: SpringHill Suites at 200 East
Sheldon Street.
Below: The stone fireplace in the lobby
of the SpringHill Suites.
Marriott’s SpringHill Suites sits just two blocks
from Prescott’s Courthouse Square on a plot of
land where the old railroad tracks used to run
and the roundhouse serviced the trains more
than a century ago. Now visitors come to the very
spot to stay at SpringHill Suites and enjoy its
comfortable Western-style ambiance. This threestory,
modern, adobe-style hotel has guests suites
that feature separate sleeping and living areas; a
kitchenette with a microwave, refrigerator, sink
and coffeemaker; and a work area complete with
free high-speed Internet access, dual phone lines,
data port and voice mail.
Each morning the hotel features a complimentary
breakfast buffet that features hot and
cold cereals, biscuits and gravy, fresh fruit,
yogurt, pastries, and a variety of coffee and teas.
Breakfast is served in the cozy reception area off
of the lobby in an atmosphere made even
more receptive by its tall stone fireplace.
Complimentary copies of today’s most widely
read newspapers are also available to guests.
SpringHill Suites provides a heated indoor
pool and spa area, decorated in a Spanish
courtyard motif, which opens onto a spacious
outdoor patio perfect for sunbathing, having a
catered luncheon or barbecue or simply
enjoying one of the magnificent sunset views of
Thumb Butte. There is also a fitness facility,
which includes a treadmill, exercise bike,
StairMaster, and elliptical ski trainer and
Universal Weights.
The Northern Arizona Hotel Group–a real
estate investment trust with a hotel management
division based in Flagstaff, owns Prescott’s
SpringHill Suites. General Manager Mya Beckley
says “As a franchise-owned Marriott and a small,
locally owned company, we have the best of
both worlds, because here is this multinational
company that excels in terms of quality, brand
recognition and customer loyalty and has a lot
of really wonderful support mechanism for us to
draw from–whether its marketing or reservation
services or sales.”
The principle owner and managing partner
at SpringHill Suites is Brad Christensen.
Christensen had been looking for the perfect site
since 1992 and was committed to creating a hotel
in Prescott near the downtown area. He found
just the site at 200 East Sheldon Street. SpringHill
76 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Suites broke ground in January 1998 and opened
its doors on Labor Day, one year later. “People
love the location,” said Mya, “and we have all of
the modern amenities and features, but what
really makes us special is the level of our staffing
and the quality of our service. We make people
feel at home. If you have a business that excels in
level of service, expression of gratitude, attention
to detail, and friendliness, it stands out as
an oasis in today’s world. Needless to say, we
have a lot of repeat customers.” SpringHill
Suites trains its staff by teaching the “We get
it” philosophy, said Mya, an acronym that
stands for “wholehearted hospitality, enthusiastic
leadership, guest-specific executional excellence,
thoughtful touches, innovative solutions and
terrific results.”
When the Marriott Corporation designed
the SpringHill Suite concept, they did not
have long-term stays in mind, but what has
happened, said Mya, is that the product is so
versatile. “For instance, if you are traveling on
business, it’s great because you have a nice work
space. Families love it because it gives them a
little more room to spread out with the kids. If
you’re waiting for your house to close escrow
and you’ve got to oversee the final phase, you
can make do for a week or two. There’s even a
guest-operated guest laundry here.”
SpringHill Suites offers daily and weekly
rates, as well as discounted rates for long-term
guests. In 2004 the hotel underwent an
expansion, adding another twenty-five rooms.
The new rooms are the ultimate in luxury with
hot tubs and fireplaces. They have also created a
brand new Business Center complete with
computers, high-speed Internet access, and
printers and and outdoor dinning area.
The heated indoor pool and spa area.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 77

MACMILLAN
CONSTRUCTION
Above: Southwest Savings. This was
MacMillan Construction’s first
commercial project in Prescott,
Arizona, in January 1973.
Below: Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church
in Prescott, Arizona.
In 1949, twelve-year-old Bill MacMillan
suffered the loss of his father. Being the child of
a struggling single mother, he was placed in the
Hershey Industrial School for Orphan Boys in
Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was there that
MacMillan was taught carpentry, a skill that
would serve as a first step on the road to a
successful career in construction.
In the mid-1950s, MacMillan began building
churches for the Church of Latter-Day Saints,
a practice that many parishioners engaged
in on a volunteer basis. At one particular
building site in Mesa, Arizona, MacMillan met
parishioner Chuck Warner. As the years
passed they worked together on several projects
in Mesa and their friendship grew into a
profitable working relationship. On November
6, 1972, MacMillan joined Warner Construction
as a partner. Then on February 16, 1973, the
company became incorporated as Warner-
MacMillan Construction Company. Bill became
the estimator who ran the office and took care of
all the paperwork, Chuck focused on being the
man in the field and the emphasis of the
company switched from residential to
commercial and industrial construction.
For ten years, Warner-MacMillan Construction
was a thriving, prosperous company. Then Chuck
Warner and Bill decided to part ways. Bill bought
out Chuck’s interest in the company and on April
15, 1983, the company officially became
MacMillan Construction.
Bill’s youngest son, Bob, was born in Mesa in
1960. Even as a five-year-old, he remembers
assisting his dad at the church building sites by
helping to pick up nails. Bob’s love for building
became evident when he was twelve years old.
He had a project to make money by raising
rabbits, and along with each rabbit sale, he
would build and sell a rabbit hutch. When he
realized that he was having more fun building
the hutches than raising the rabbits, he knew he
was destined to follow in his dad’s footsteps.
By 1983, Bob had been paying his dues over
the years, working his way up from laborer to
carpenter, then carpenter’s foreman to assistant
superintendent to superintendent. Now it was
78 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

time for him to accept an even more prominent
role in the company. To fill out the board of
officers, Bill became president, Bob became
secretary and his older brother was named
treasurer. But when Bob’s brother left to pursue
a career in the computer field, Bob became the
secretary-treasurer. “To this day though,” said
Bob, “a title in this company doesn’t mean
much. From dumping trash to sweeping
floors, we all do whatever is needed to get the
job done.”
Bill was sixty-three when he retired and
turned over the company to his son. Bob says of
his continuing, on-the-job education that at this
point he has a “PH.D. in life.” “This job is not an
8-to-5 job. You’ve got to do your homework.
You’ve got to stay on top of all the changes in
the industry and to be on top of it means
putting in the time to continually educate
yourself. Different building challenges can be a
real trial by fire. This is where experience is so
valuable.” Bob’s philosophy, which was instilled
in him by his parents, is shared with his
employees: “If we make a mistake, we make it
right. No hassles. This is probably one of our
biggest assets and it starts with me. Whatever
we do, it’s a team effort.”
MacMillan Construction is one of the most
sought after construction companies in Prescott,
which Bob credits to the high degree of
expertise, quality of workmanship, and
company philosophy. “We work within the
client’s time frame,” said Bob, “finishing the
work within the specified time or sooner, we are
easy to get along with, and we believe that
customer is always right. We get in, get the job
done, and don’t make waves. Our motto? ‘Our
business is building yours.’”
Above: Residential Village for Embry-
Riddle Aeronautical University in
Prescott, Arizona.
Below: Granite Gate Retirement
Community, a Leisure Care facility in
Prescott, Arizona.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 79

THE PALACE
HOTEL &
THE JERSEY
LILLY SALOON
RELOCATION
SPECIALISTS,
LLC.
Above: A photo of the Palace Hotel
shortly after it burned in 1900.
Below: A hidden staircase found in
The Palace Hotel when the building
was restored.
The Palace Hotel, home to the likes of Wyatt
Earp, Doc Holliday, and Big Nose Kate was a
lively place in 1877. It was a favorite haunt of
politicians, cowboys, and miners, who spent
their time eating, drinking, gambling, and
enjoying the company of the ladies of the
evening. One hot night in the summer of 1900,
a fire broke out that spread quickly through
downtown Prescott, leveling most of Whiskey
Row. The owners of The Palace Hotel
and Saloon did not allow themselves to be
undone by the catastrophe. They were
determined to put up a building “that would not
take second place to any in the city,” wrote a
local newspaper.
Out of the ashes rose the new Palace Hotel, a
three-story brick building with Grecian-Style
architecture that housed an elegant establishment
complete with barber shop, restaurant, liquor store,
gambling hall, saloon, and twenty private rooms
that featured steam heat, electricity, and running
water. The hotel owners spared no expense, filling
the hotel with oak furniture, matching woodwork
and wainscoting, and carpeted hallways.
Owners Ben Belcher, Barney Smith, and Robert
Brow had to raise $50,000 to complete the new
hotel. Along the way they received some help from
the late Senator Barry Goldwater’s uncle, Morris
Goldwater. After The Palace was up and running,
it took only three months to pay back Goldwater’s
$15,000. The Palace Hotel shined once again.
Barney Smith remained the owner of The
Palace till his death in 1943. Over the next three
generations, during the heydays of Whiskey Row,
Shell Dunbar was a mainstay both as a proprietor
and bar owner.
As the years passed, The Palace ceased to
function as a hotel, but continued as The Palace
Saloon and Restaurant, or at times, simply, The
Palace Saloon. In the latter half of the twentieth
century, the building fell into a state of disrepair.
Dino Wallerich, a local real estate broker
for Relocation Specialists, Llc., wanted to
help. As Wallerich said, “I always felt as if I
belonged there.”
By 1999 the building was owned by
Dr. Ted Smith, a well-loved retired veterinarian.
The idea to rejuvenate The Palace was born on the
Fourth of July, as Smith and a group of local
80 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

usinessmen and friends sat on the balcony
enjoying the parade. The group realized The
Palace could not be utilized again as a hotel
because of today’s building standards, so they
decided to restore the building and turn the
upstairs hotel rooms into offices and the balcony
area into an upscale saloon.
Following the original blueprints, hotel rooms
were brought back to life and set up as offices;
light fixtures, doors, and glass, which were lying
dormant in the basement, were also utilized. As
the restoration continued, secrets of the past were
revealed, including hidden staircases, old arched
doorways, and the hotel’s original north entrance.
The back deck and two of the brothel suites were
also refurbished to create V.I.P. living quarters.
The new upscale saloon was named Jersey Lilly
Saloon. “We needed a bar on Whiskey Row for
upscale socializing,” said Wallerich, “so Jersey Lilly
Saloon was a perfect addition to the building.” The
name was taken from the English theater star Lillie
Langtry, who graced the stage of the old Prescott
Opera House on her tour through the West. These
days, Jersey Lilly Saloon has become “the place” for
socializing. It is especially popular because it
affords a perfect view of the courthouse plaza,
where a variety of events and holiday parades take
place. Jersey Lilly Saloon is owned and operated by
Tommy Meredith, a local real estate broker.
Though there have been occasional ghostly
happenings at The Palace, it has only served to add
to its present charm. The Palace attracted
nationwide attention when director Sam
Peckinpah, stayed there during the filming of
Junior Bonner, and rock singer Janis Joplin called
The Palace her “home away from home.” Today
The Palace is once more a center of social activity
and a priceless homage to the Old West.
The current Jersey Lilly Saloon
on “Whiskey Row,” upstairs in
The Palace building, formerly
The Palace Hotel, overlooking the
courthouse plaza.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 81

YAVAPAI-
PRESCOTT
INDIAN
TRIBE
The Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe
tribal seal.
The history of the Yavapai-Prescott Indian
Tribe has its origin in the southwestern
United States since time immemorial. With
physical evidence dating back more than a
thousand years, the Yavapai-Prescott Indian
Tribe’s connection to Prescott is unique.
The tribe maintained an aboriginal territory
encompassing over nine million acres—what is
now, in part, Yavapai County. Practicing
seasonal horticulture, the tribe moved within its
tribal homelands, harvesting available foods and
finding shelter. It is estimated that more than
several thousand members lived in the tribal
homelands prior to the 1860s.
Life changed dramatically for the Yavapais
when settlers, beginning in the early 1840s,
ventured west to explore the land and search for
gold. Being unfamiliar with different
tribes, some mistook the
Yavapai people for Apaches.
Many newcomers to the
region attacked the
Yavapai people at every
opportunity and, as
a result, they could
no longer move freely
in search of game and
shelter. In the mid-
1860s, the Yavapai
started to fight back in a
desperate attempt to protect
their land and resources.
By the 1870s, efforts were
made to relocate the Yavapai onto
reservations, first at Date Creek and then in
1871, General George Crook of Prescott’s
Fort Whipple ordered all “roving Apache”
placed on the Rio Verde Reservation located
in the middle of Verde Valley. Those who
refused to go were treated as hostile Indians.
In response, the army massacred many of
the Yavapai people. Most of the Yavapai were
sent to the Rio Verde Reservation–only to be
moved again to the San Carlos Apache
Reservation. This 180-mile march, what the
Yavapai call the March of Tears, claimed the
lives of more than 115 Yavapai men, women,
and children.
The San Carlos reservation’s conditions were
desperate. Food and water were scarce and the
Yavapai continued to die in great numbers from
malnutrition, disease and illness. It is said that,
at one time, there were not enough Yavapai at
San Carlos to collect the wood required to
cremate their dead.
Some of the Yavapai managed to escape the
march and returned to the Prescott area, settling
near Fort Whipple. In the 1900s, when Indians
were first permitted to leave the reservations,
eight Yavapai families from San Carlos also
returned to the area. Historians estimate that
fewer than six hundred Yavapai Indians
survived. Settling once again in their homeland,
the Granite Mountain Yavapai appointed Sam
Jimulla as their chief and leader.
Jimulla worked hard to improve conditions
for his people. Several non-Indian members of
the Prescott community joined them in their
efforts to establish a reservation. In
1930, makeshift houses and dirt
lanes were replaced by stone
houses and roads built by
the Yavapai with help
from the Civil Works
Administration and
the Works Progress
Administration.
On June 7, 1935,
Yavapai-Prescott
Indian Reservation was
finally established on
seventy-five aces of land
transferred from the old Fort
Whipple Military Reserve. This
land transference created the reservation
strictly for Yavapai Indians only. In establishing
the reservation, the government issued
two cows to each family as a potential source of
additional income. Over the years, the
increasing size of the cattle herd led to
the government’s decision in May 1956 to
add 1,320 acres from the Military to
the reservation.
When Chief Sam Jimulla died in May 1940,
his wife, Viola, succeeded him. A devout
Christian, she organized the first Indian
Presbyterian Mission. She was also known as a
talented basket weaver. The only woman chief
among North American Indians at the time,
many people mourned their loss when she died
in 1966. Her name was later placed in the
Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame.
82 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Yavapai women are known for making
beautiful baskets. Their weaving skills produced
baskets that were functional and artistic, with
intricate designs and high-quality craftsmanship.
Because they maintained a vast territory,
the Yavapai moved from camp to camp. The
journey between camps could take four days.
Everything they had was moved in burden
baskets. Sturdy, lightweight baskets were the
backbone of the Yavapais’ subsistence. They
would carry large loads of harvested food
products and family possessions.
The tribal flag of the Yavapai is blue in color,
which represents the water of the great flood
that a lone woman, Komwidamapokwia—the
mother of this generation of Yavapai—survived,
and also the sky, where she and her grandson
now reside.
The Tribal Seal represents the four worlds of
the Yavapai and is illustrated using the color
yellow for petals of the sun and the story of
Skatakaamcha, the culture hero of the Yavapai,
whose father was the sun.
The equilateral crosses represent the
most important symbol of the Yavapai.
Komwidamapokwia and Skatakaamcha used the
equilateral cross for healing. Spaniards gave the
Yavapai the name Cruzados because they wore
crosses in their hair. The cross (star) also
represents Venus, which appears both as the
Morning Star and the Evening Star and
symbolizes where they are now residing. Many
Yavapai women are given a name with “star”
(hamsi) included.
Komwidamapokwia gave the Yavapai four
stones for medicine and directions. These stones
were white, turquoise, red and black and are
depicted near the edges of the basket in the four
directions.
Today, a president, vice-president, secretary/
treasurer and two board members govern the
Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe. It is through
planned economic and community development
that the tribe hopes to achieve even greater
independence and self-determination. Located
adjacent to Prescott, the reservation of just
under 1,400 acres houses 162 tribal members.
Tribal enterprises include a business park,
shopping center and two casinos. Through
intergovernmental agreements, the Tribal Police
Department and Dispatch Services with the
Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department provide law
enforcement and fire protection is provided by the
City of Prescott.
Modern Yavapai-Prescott Indians
dress in traditional garb during
a Fiesta Bowl parade on
December 31 2003.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 83

EMBRY-RIDDLE
AERONAUTICAL
UNIVERSITY
On December 17, 1925, twenty-two years
after the historic flight of the Wright Flyer,
barnstormer John Paul Riddle and entrepreneur
T. Higbee Embry of Cincinnati, Ohio, founded
the Embry-Riddle Company. The following
spring, the company opened the Embry-Riddle
School of Aviation.
Today, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
leads the world in aviation and aerospace higher
education. Embry-Riddle has residential
campuses in Prescott, Arizona and Daytona
Beach, Florida, as well as a network of 130
extended campus sites throughout the United
States and Western Europe.
In 1977, University President Jack Hunt
learned of a vacant college campus in Prescott,
Arizona. Hunt found the western location to be
ideal for flight with its sunny, arid weather,
uncluttered skies, and close proximity to the
local airport. With its spacious campus, Prescott
proved to be a perfect place for an expansion.
Embry-Riddle’s Prescott campus opened in
1978 with 328 students. At that time, twentysix
flight instructors taught in fifteen Grumman
“Tiger Cats” and the Prescott campus sole
degree offering was a bachelor of science in
aeronautical science. Today, Embry-Riddle’s
Prescott campus offers twelve different bachelor
of science degree programs and one master’s
degree. More than seventeen hundred students
are enrolled in such courses as aeronautical
science; aerospace engineering; global
security and intelligence studies; space physics;
electrical and computer engineering; and safety
science. Nearly one hundred flight instructors
teach in a fleet of modern aircraft and
sophisticated simulators.
Embry-Riddle’s Prescott campus is the
proud home of the Golden Eagles Flight
Team, the 2003 National Intercollegiate
Flying Association’s national champions. Its aerospace
engineering program has been consistently
ranked in the top five by U.S. News &
World Report.
In 2003, Embry-Riddle’s Prescott campus,
currently under the leadership of Chancellor Dan
Carrell, celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. In
recent years, the campus has experienced
tremendous growth, including the addition of the
David L. and S. Harry Robertson Flight
Simulation Center. A forty-eight-thousandsquare-foot
Academic Complex will open in
Fall 2004, with state-of-the-art classrooms,
laboratories, and a meteorology suite.
Two of ERAU’s twin-engine Piper
Seminoles, which are used in flight
instruction. The planes are flying over
the Prescott area.
84 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

RED ARROW
REAL ESTATE
Red Arrow Real Estate is the most successful
independent real estate company in Prescott and
the surrounding area. Founded in Prescott in
1987 by Betty and George Womble, Red Arrow
quickly grew from three agents to forty because
of an expanded market share and the addition of
an office in Prescott Valley. Don and Shirl Pence,
former owners of a successful business in the
Phoenix area, purchased Red Arrow Real Estate
from the Wombles in 1996.
With a vision toward the future and a desire
to be a major force in the Prescott area real
estate business community, the Pence’s daughter
Carrie Smego, the company’s president; John B.
Clark, the designated broker; and Kristy
Richardson, the office manager, work as a unified
management team to reach Don and Shirl’s
goals. By the fall of 2002, the company produced
a total sales volume of over one billion.
By the spring of 2003, Red Arrow had successfully
expanded to over seventy agents and four
office locations, providing a broad range of real
estate services to the entire area. With the purchase
of the properties at three of its four office
locations (Prescott; Prescott Valley; Prescott
Country Club, Dewey, and the Villages at Lynx
Creek, Dewey), Red Arrow has established stability
and is highly recognized in the eyes of the
community. “Red Arrow’s growing success each
year,” said John Clark “is a direct result of the
fine reputation established with the public and
the local real estate community, as well as the
Pence’s foresight and faith in their exceptional
agents and outstanding employees.”
The owners and staff at Red Arrow have
always been great supporters of local charities
such as Big Brothers/Big Sisters, the Heritage
Park Zoo, the Yavapai Humane Society, and the
Kiwanis Club. Red Arrow has also had continuous
memberships in the local, state, and
National Association of REALTORS®, the Better
Business Bureau; the Chambers of Commerce in
Prescott, Prescott Valley, Chino Valley and the
Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Above: Red Arrow Real Estate is
located at 1107 East Gurley Street in
Prescott and on the Internet at
www.redarrowrealestate.com.
Below: Don and Shirl Pence.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 85

AGR PAVING &
SEALING, INC.
Above: Ritchie Coats (left), Dylon
Alvarez, and Scott Perkins paving a
parking lot.
Below: Ritchie and Glennda Coats’
grandchildren, the next generation
in training.
Ritchie Coats was nineteen in 1976 when he
married his sweetheart, Glennda, creating a union
that would result in the birth of two beautiful
daughters and in the making of a successful
business. As a young man, Ritchie worked at
lumberyards and hardware stores, but then in
1983 began working for an asphalt paving
company in Prescott. It was here that Ritchie
would learn about patching and filling potholes,
sealing, preserving asphalt, and striping–skills that
would play an important part in his future.
Four years later, Ritchie and Glennda saw an
opportunity to begin their own business when
they recognized a local need for a seal coating
business. On February 12, 1987, AGR Paving &
Sealing was born. Ritchie trained himself on the
job and was educated by reading various books
and publications to get familiar with industry
procedures. To market the company, Ritchie and
Glennda combed through asphalt maintenance
books for ideas, then created letterhead and flyers
and paid visits to driveways and commercial
buildings that had parking lots.
For the first couple of years, Ritchie said, it
was “rough going,” because they were competing
against Phoenix firms that would grab Prescott
business during the summertime. But it wasn’t
long before AGR began to win over local folks.
Ritchie stays, “That by 1989, we were getting
more and more jobs. That’s when we started
doing more new construction and new paving
jobs, in addition to asphalt maintenance.”
AGR is a family affair. Ritchie is the
president; Glennda is the secretary of the
corporation; and her sister, Debbie Phillips, is
AGR’s office manager. The company engages in
work for subdivisions, new construction projects,
and site preparation for commercial buildings.
“Our business objective has always been quality
and this is what we continue to stand for today.
Our motto is ‘paving into the future.’” As a native
Prescottonian, Ritchie Coats said that he has
always felt a deep sense of pride for his hometown.
AGR Paving & Sealing, Inc. can by reached
by calling 928-775-2655.
86 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

PRESCOTT
BREWING
COMPANY
John Nielsen’s appreciation for quality beer
began in the 1970s when he was stationed in
Germany. During the 1980s his dream of
creating his own brewpub was born, a dream
that would be enthusiastically shared by his
wife, Roxane. It began with a visit to a new,
small-scale brewpub restaurant in Hayward,
California, where John was thrilled to discover
that the microbrewed beer tasted as good as its
European counterpart. After a tour of the minibrewery,
John said he was “mesmerized.” From
that moment on, he began learning all he could
on the subject of beer and brewing, which led to
enrollment in college-level courses in
fermentation science.
The Nielsens’ education expanded to include
tours of small brewpubs and large brewing
plants, and attendance at national microbrewery
conferences. “To succeed,” said Roxane, “we
knew we had to develop a business plan and a
good solid food program, as well as hire
someone with a lot of operational experience.”
John focused on the process of brewing and the
development of his own unique recipes and
Roxane took charge of all things administrative.
They hired an experienced restaurant manager,
a certified chef, and a consultant who had
experience in creating successful brewpubs.
The Nielsens chose to leave their hometown
of Felton, California, because they felt that
Prescott was not only large enough to support
their new business venture but offered a real
sense of community. They found just the right
spot for their fun and friendly brewpub at 130
West Gurley Street, at the site of the old
Bashford Mercantile building. The Prescott
Brewing Company, which opened on March 15,
1994, has become a favorite of food and beer
connoisseurs. It has won numerous national and
international gold medals for excellence in
brewing. Today, the Prescott Brewing Company
presents a unique menu of freshly prepared
foods and offers eight-to-twelve beers on tap
from a repertoire of almost forty different styles
brewed throughout the year.
“Beer is living proof that God loves us
and wants to see us happy.”
- Benjamin Franklin
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 87

R. W. TURNER &
SONS PUMP &
WINDMILL
COMPANY
Above: “Wooly Well,” Deep Well
Ranch. Rick Turner and helper,
Darryl Gasho, working on down hole
equipment, c. 1997.
Below: Setting pump equipment in a
well in Highland pines to perform a
pump test.
As a young man, R. W. Turner worked
in core drilling in Canada, and as the
years passed, his experience widened in
the field of drilling and mechanics. In
1973, Turner moved his family to
Arizona, a place he had grown fond of
during his Air Force days. His sons were
teenagers when Turner opened up his
own pump and windmill business in
Chino Valley. At first, the work was
localized, but as area expansion took
place, the company’s business extended
outward into the ranchlands, where
windmills are still essential for
production of stock water.
Turner’s eldest son, Lon, worked in
different phases of construction and as a
commercial electrician before joining the
family business. Lon said that his father
taught his sons some important moral
lessons: “He believed that a man’s word
was as good as his handshake and he
taught us that when there’s a bad
situation, reconcile and let it go, and
don’t hold onto grudges.”
Rick, R. W.’s second son, went to work
for a gas line contractor and for six years
ran a backhoe. By the time R. W. was ready
to retire from the business, Rick was ready
for a change. He joined his brother in
1986, and today, Rick can be found most
of the time out in the field working with
the crews, while Lon focuses his energies
on taking care of the sales end of the
business, system design, cost control, and
troubleshooting. “The business continues
to flourish,” said Lon, “as a result of
positive word-of-mouth.”
R. W. Turner & Sons Pump & Windmill
Company specializes in domestic, singlefamily
dwelling water delivery systems, and
handles commercial, municipal, and
irrigation systems from design to
installation and servicing. The company
also installs new windmills and services
existing ones. In 1995 the company
expanded to the Wickenburg area, where it
bought an existing pump service company.
This service area now encompasses the
central Arizona region. “We believe,” says
Lon, “in the future of R. W. Turner & Sons.”
88 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Tim Coury was born and raised in
Mesa, Arizona, and even as a young boy, he
had a dream of becoming a car dealer. As
a result of this dream, in 1981, he opened
his first used car lot in Apache Junction,
Arizona. Five years later, he became the
youngest Buick dealer in the nation when
he opened Tim’s Buick-Pontiac-GMC and
Toyota in Prescott.
Since opening the dealership, demand has
necessitated four expansions in both sales
and service. In addition to this expansion,
Coury opened used car dealerships in Prescott
Valley and Chino Valley. Tim’s has become one
of the most successful dealerships in the
Southwest, and has won many accolades and
awards from General Motors and Toyota,
especially in the areas of sales, service, and
customer satisfaction. As a result, Coury has
been featured in People magazine no less than
three times.
By 2003, Tim’s had quadrupled in size, which
Coury credits to positive word of mouth and the
huge growth of Prescott, Prescott Valley, and
Chino Valley.
Tim is a hands-on president, who lives
most of the time in blue jeans and boots.
In the morning, he works at his car dealership,
handling customer and employee concerns.
In the afternoon, he engages in another love,
ranching and farming. At the top of importance
in his life, though, are his five daughters, who,
Tim said, “make it all worthwhile.”
Coury believes in giving back to the
community. During his twenty-two years in
Prescott, he has given literally hundreds of
thousands of dollars to various local groups
and charities. When asked about the keys to
his success, Coury quotes his late father, a
WWII veteran who taught him: “Don’t let
your feet get too big for your rug,” and “Take
care of your employees and they’ll take care of
your customers.”
Coury’s future plans include a new Toyota
dealership in Prescott Valley, with a planned
Spring 2005 grand opening. Coury has
also expanded his business with the purchase of
a Hyundai-Isuzu dealership in Prescott.
TIM’S
BUICK-PONTIAC-
GMC-TOYOTA
Above: Tim Coury.
Below: Tim’s is located at 1006
Commerce Drive in Prescott, Arizona.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 89

YAVAPAI TITLE
AGENCY
Above: The original location of
Yavapai Title Agency at Willis and
Granite Streets, 1964.
Below: Yavapai Title Agency’s main
office at 123 North Montezuma
in Prescott.
Yavapai Title Agency was founded in 1963 by
Frank Kelly, the firm’s first president; lawyers John
Favour and Keith Quail; real estate brokers John
Pauley and Charles McDonald; Charles Green;
George Lentz; and local banker Tom Russell. Norb
Wedepohl and Ken Waters initially joined Kelly, a
seasoned title and escrow executive, both
experienced professionals as well. At the time,
there were two title companies in town, and given
the strong growth prospects for the county, the
group saw the need for a third competitor.
In 1964, Yavapai Title Company set down roots
at the corner of Willis and Granite Streets in a
warehouse owned by Kelly’s brother, but the
company soon expanded into a building on Cortez
Street. Its motto “Locally owned and operated,”
sent out a message to the community that they
could offer more personalized service than their
nationwide competitors. The company dedicated
itself to the facilitation of real estate transactions
and the protection of property ownership.
Those who work at Yavapai Title today bring
as much as forty years experience to the job.
“Experience, professionalism, and integrity are
the hallmarks of those who work here,” said Bob
Weiss, the current president. “What makes
Yavapai Title Company so successful is not only
a supportive atmosphere but qualified staff who
are available to answer questions, have the
ability and experience to solve problems, and
are able to get the job done in a timely and
efficient manner.”
Yavapai Title currently has eight offices
throughout the county. In 2000, it became a
subsidiary of Pioneer Title Holding of Sierra
Vista, whose chairman is Bob Newlon. Newlon
resided in Prescott during the 1960s, where he
served the community in a number of rolls,
including a term as Chamber of Commerce
president. But Yavapai Title remains, first and
foremost, an independent local company, whose
new motto is “where excellence is tradition.”
90 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

The roots of Brown & Brown of Prescott date
back to 1877, when a man by the name of C. P.
Martindell moved to Prescott and began offering
insurance to area homes and businesses. His
company, Martindell and Horne, changed
hands—as well as names—numerous times
through the coming century. In 1998, Brown &
Brown acquired Azcott Insurance and John
Phillips Insurance to form their current agency.
Brown & Brown of Prescott provides the
community with commercial insurance, home
and auto insurance, life, health and group
medical insurance, workers’ compensation and
bonds. Though affiliated with the parent
company, Brown & Brown of Prescott operates
as a local, independent agency. “We have the
best of both worlds,” said Ed Kurowski,
president of Brown & Brown of Prescott, “being
independent yet having the support and
resources of the sixth largest agency in the
country. Denny Colgan and John Phillips
provided us with a strong client base and ethical
foundation from which to build.”
Ed Kurowski, an experienced agent, took
over as president of Brown & Brown of Prescott
in 2002. He said that people take comfort in the
fact that Brown & Brown has been in business a
long time, and they know the agency people to
be knowledgeable and committed to serving the
community. Brown & Brown of Prescott
currently has nine insurance specialists who,
Kurowski says, “always put the customers
first and work hard to protect the assets of
our customers.”
The parent company, Brown & Brown, Inc.,
is a publicly owned company, which currently
has 119 branches in twenty-seven states
nationwide. It trades on the New York Stock
Exchange under the symbol BRO.
Brown & Brown of Prescott is a member of
the Chambers of Commerce of Prescott, Prescott
Valley and the Yavapai County Contractors
Association (YCCA). The company is active in
charity work and lends its support to the Sharlot
Hall Museum, the YMCA, Big Brothers/Big
Sisters, and area schools through donations.
BROWN &
BROWN
INSURANCE
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 91

HAMPTON
FUNERAL
HOME
Hampton Funeral Home at 240 South
Cortez Street.
After many years of working in the funeral
business in the Prescott area, Henry C.
Hampton Sr. had established such a fine
reputation that he decided to take the necessary
steps toward creating a business of his
own. The year was 1955. First, Henry found
the perfect facility—in the old Goldwater
home at 240 South Cortez Street—and though
he had little working capital, his suppliers
and funeral vendors lent him their unwavering
moral and financial support. After only one
year of operation, Henry had paid all of his
debts in full and the business was strong enough
to stand on its own. The Hampton Funeral
Home officially opened in January 1956
and today is Prescott’s oldest, family owned
funeral home.
In the early days, Henry Hampton, Sr.,
helped 60 to 70 families a year. Over the last
forty-six years, the Hampton Funeral Home has
met the needs of thousands of families who have
suffered the loss of loved ones. Henry C.
Hampton Sr. was a man who cared deeply about
his community. When the Hampton Funeral
Home first began, in addition to its funeralrelated
services, it provided an ambulance
service to the citizens of Prescott and
surrounding areas, assuming all costs of the
service for many years. This degree of devotion
is reflected in his son and successor, Henry
“Butch” Hampton, Jr.
For over two generations, the Hampton
Family has enthusiastically supported their
community through their involvement with
many charitable and worthy nonprofit
organizations, including the YMCA, in its efforts
to provide physical education teachers for the
public schools; the athletic departments of
Prescott High School and Yavapai College; and
Alzheimer’s support organizations; as well as
with local events such as the Prescott Frontier
Days Rodeo; the Christmas Courthouse
Lighting; and the Fourth of July Parade, in
which the Hampton Family hosts the Arizona
Pioneer Home’s residents to a gala morning of
entertainment, food, and libations.
92 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

HOTEL
ST. MICHAEL
In 1891 the Hotel Burke advertised itself as
“Prescott’s only fireproof hotel.” That was before
the famous fire of 1900, which roared through
the downtown area, razing all of the bars,
brothels, and most of the Hotel Burke. The
proprietors, Michael J. Hickey and Dennis
Burke, used the opportunity to complete a
“splendid new hotel,” with gargoyles adorning
the outside to protect the guests within.
In 1907, John Duke bought out Burke’s
interest. After the passing of Hickey, Duke
changed the name of this historic hotel in honor
of his late partner, whose death, it is said, deeply
affected him. The Hotel St. Michael, located at
the corner of Montezuma and Gurley Streets, is
lovingly known as “The Grande Dame of
Prescott, the Cornerstone of Whiskey Row.”
Throughout its colorful history, the Hotel St.
Michael has given lodging to many notables,
including Theodore Roosevelt, Billy the Kid,
Doc Holiday, the Earps, and more recently, Barry
Goldwater, who gave many a political speech in
its ballroom.
Today, the Hotel St. Michael continues its
historic accommodations along with the
addition of most modern amenities. Each of its
seventy-two rooms—complete with cable
television and air-conditioning—are reasonably
priced from $59 to $109. Guests of the hotel are
treated to a complimentary, cooked-to-order,
hot breakfast served in the fully restored Caffé
St. Michael. The Caffé St. Michael, which serves
breakfast, lunch, and dinner, specializes in
delicious bistro-style food and drink. Specialty
shops in St. Michael’s Alley offer visitors a
cornucopia of delights, from antiques and
Native American collectibles to creative
clothing, art galleries, a wine cellar, and the best
hat store in the West.
The hotel’s original, turn-of-the-century
dining room, once noted as “The Finest Dining
Room in the West,” is now known as The Crystal
Ballroom. It hosts many functions throughout
the year from business seminars to wedding
receptions to holiday parties. The room can
accommodate up to 175 for dinner, catered by
the hotel’s award-winning banquet staff, or up to
300 for theater-style presentations.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 93

KPPV 106.7 FM
“THE MIX”
KQNA 1130 AM
CNN HEADLINE
NEWS RADIO
Sanford Cohen was always meant to be in
radio. Though he graduated with a B.A. in
economics, the world of broadcasting proved to
be irresistible. After working at the campus radio
station at Michigan State University, Cohen
crisscrossed the country accepting more and more
prestigious broadcasting jobs. When Cohen made
the decision to own his own radio station, he
searched the country for a vacant FM channel and
found it in Prescott Valley. His station hit the
airwaves on August 30, 1985. “When we began,”
said Cohen, “we were on a limited budget and the
antenna was mounted on a telephone pole next to
the studio. You couldn’t even hear us in Prescott.”
Because commercial power was cost-prohibitive,
Cohen went solar, creating the first solar-powered
FM radio station in the country.
KPPV began as KIHX 106.3 with the slogan “I
get my Kicks on 106.” It was a catchy slogan and
a popular station. But the problem was the radio
rating industry got the station’s call letters
confused with the country music station KNIX.
Sanford’s high ratings were credited to the wrong
station, which created the illusion that KIHX
had no listeners. The situation improved
dramatically when Sanford changed his station’s
call letters to KPPV. KPPV-FM 106.7 plays a
light, adult contemporary music mix. Its
counterpart, KQNA 1130 AM, which first aired
in December 1993, brings world news and the
latest sports (Arizona’s Cardinals, Diamondbacks
and Coyotes) to the Tri-City area. KPPV is a hit
and Cohen credits much of his success to his
wife, Terry, who he says has been with him
“every step of the way.”
KPPV sponsors yearly Tri-City events and
Sanford is known for his passionate community
involvement. “Being a part of a radio station is no
different than being a fireman, or a policeman, or
any other part of the infrastructure of a
community,” said Sanford. “Our responsibility is to
be as technically current as possible and
responsive to the needs of the community on an
ever-evolving basis.”
94 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

For more than a century, Prescott’s The
Daily Courier has endured as Yavapai County’s
news and information source. It took its
place among Arizona’s territorial newspapers
on January 30, 1881, when John Huguenot
Marion published The Prescott Morning Courier.
His offices were on the second floor of the
original county courthouse, a good vantage
point to witness the legal hangings that took
place in the yard below. When Marion died
in 1891, E. A. Rogers took over the newspaper’s
leadership. Four years later, The Courier moved
into new quarters, complete with electricity, on
Montezuma Street.
In 1920 the publication became The Prescott
Evening Courier, and in 1936 it merged with
the Daily Journal-Miner. W. P. Stuart, whose
wife was Della Tovrea Stuart of the pioneer
Arizona cattle family, bought The Courier
during the Roaring Twenties. Three decades
later, Don Soldwedel, president of Western
Newspapers, Inc., went into negotiations
with Stuart to purchase the paper. He had
heard that Stuart was a loyal Rotary Club
member, so Soldwedel attended the club
meetings each month in hopes of convincing
Stuart to sell. After almost nine months of
meetings, Stuart and Soldwedel shook hands
over the purchase, which became official on
September 22, 1958.
In 1960, The Courier became the first daily
in Arizona to advance from the “dark ages”
of the hot metal printing method to offset.
The Courier established another “first” in
Arizona in the 1990s when its production
process went hi-tech computer to plate to
press. The Prescott Courier became The Daily
Courier in 1996, when growth in the area
prompted the publication to take a more
regional approach to news coverage.
Today, Prescott Newspapers, Inc., is
comprised of five newspapers (one daily and
four weeklies), one shopper, a monthly real
estate book, a monthly business publication,
two telephone directories, and a commercial
printing facility.
Joe Soldwedel, Don’s son, is
the current president of Yuma-based Western
Newspapers, Inc., the parent company of
Prescott Newspapers, Inc. Don remains active
in the company as chairman of the board.
PRESCOTT NEWSPAPERS, INC.
Top: Courier Building, circa 1895.
Middle: Don Soldwedel and his
son, Joe.
Bottom: The Daily Courier is located
at 1958 Commerce Center Circle
in Prescott.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 95

HAMPTON
INN OF
PRESCOTT
Above: The Hampton Inn of Prescott
is located at 3453 Ranch Drive near
the Prescott Gateway Mall.
Bottom (clockwise from top, left):
A standard room with two queensize
beds.
The Hampton Inn of Prescott’s lobby
is warm and welcoming.
A fun pool area is available for guests
of all ages.
Rooms are available for business
conferences and meetings.
When Shirley and Curtis Henry wanted to move
from Wisconsin and retire, they planned on
running a small independent hotel, but instead
decided to take on the challenge of a Hampton
Inn—a part of the Hilton brand. After scouting out
three different locations in Arizona, they chose
Prescott for its sheer beauty and downtown charm.
Though Shirley and Curtis are the managing
partners, they are able to rely on their other
investors for ideas and support. Shirley is the
general manager and Curtis is the maintenance
engineer and together they have created a threediamond
rating from AAA—the highest rating for a
limited-service hotel. The Hampton Inn of Prescott
has ranked in the top five percent of over 1,250
hotels in the U.S. since opening—a rating based on
customer satisfaction surveys and quality assurance
inspections. The Hampton Inn has received the
Pride and Circle of Excellence Awards.
“Though we are not technically considered a
full-service hotel,” says Shirley, “when people
come and stay, we want them to have a comparable
experience. The whole place is very warm and
inviting, just like being at home.” Even the lobby,
with its fireplace and cozy ambience, finds guests
spending time there relaxing and reading.
Each day brings a full-size, complimentary,
Healthy Start breakfast bar filled with tempting
items. There’s also an indoor swimming pool, a
kid’s pool and a hot tub in an atmosphere that is
bright and welcoming. An elephant and a frog
adorn the pools—adding a touch of Wisconsin,
which is well known for its water parks. There’s
also an exercise room complete with treadmill,
stair-stepper, and cardio-bike.
Throughout the year, the Hampton Inn offers
romance packages, golf packages, and even
shopping spree packages. The rooms, which
feature an “eclectic look with a southwestern
flair,” are reasonably priced from $69 to $129 for
standard accommodations. There are also tworoom
suites and whirlpool suites. Meeting space is
available. The seventy-six-room hotel is located
near the Prescott Gateway Mall at 3453 Ranch
Drive, off of Lee Boulevard.
96 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

“When you deal with a local business,
you get special service, special treatment,
someone who has your personal interests
at heart.” This is the philosophy of Cam Smith,
the owner and president of Yavapai Block &
Precast, whose family has been meeting the
masonry needs of hardworking people in
Prescott since 1968.
Yavapai Block & Precast (YBC), a complete
supplier of materials for the building industry,
was originally headquartered on Sixth Street,
where a supermarket is located today. In 1990
the property was sold to make way for the
Depot Marketplace and Smith acquired six acres
off of Sundog Ranch Road where he built a new,
computerized facility. The plant specializes in
custom masonry, often unavailable from other
sources. YBC produces an innovative line of
integral-colored masonry products, including
scored, split-face, fluted, and striated units, as
well as Versalock retaining wall systems. You
can find glass blocks and a complete line of
concrete and masonry tools. The Precast
Division offers septic tanks, manholes, and
wastewater treatment systems.
Smith partnered with his family in the
business from 1968 to 1978, then acquired sole
ownership. He now shares management duties
with his eldest son, Tyler. After graduating from
Prescott High School, Ty joined the U.S. Navy
and spent four years on a nuclear submarine,
the USS Houston. He returned home and
enrolled at NAU where he received a bachelor’s
degree in business administration in 1982.
He joined YBC as general manager and has
been an integral part of the company for nearly
fifteen years. Ty and his wife Teresa are the
proud parents of four daughters, aged three
to eleven. Other valued employees with
over twenty years of service include Ray
Baca, Glenn Ross Jr., Dale Youngren, and
Ralph Rodarte.
Cam and his wife Kitty believe strongly in
the power of family and in giving back to
the community in which they live. This is
evident when you visit Yavapai Block, whose
walls are covered with awards, certificates,
and thank-you letters from community
organizations, schools, and charities in the
Tri-City area.
YAVAPAI
BLOCK &
PRECAST
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 97

MURPHY,
LUTEY,
SCHMITT &
FUCHS
Above: The members of Murphy,
Lutey, Schmitt & Fuchs.
Below: The historic Prescott Elks
Building, offices of Murphy, Lutey,
Schmitt & Fuchs.
“One day an old man walked into the office
and said, ‘First time I ever came to this office for
legal advice, I tied my horse out front.’”
The distinguished Prescott law firm of
Murphy, Lutey, Schmitt & Fuchs has a long
and honorable history that dates back to the
1880s. Through the generations, many names
have graced the firm’s shingle: Ross &
O’Sullivan; Locklear & Wolfinger; Head & Toci;
Toci, Murphy & Beck. Today, Murphy, Lutey,
Schmitt & Fuchs is one of the most recognized
law firms in Northern Arizona.
“In the early days, almost every lawyer was
engaged in general practice, but today’s lawyers
must specialize,” stated a senior member of the
firm. The firm’s attorneys, who represent more
than one-hundred years of legal experience,
focus on matters involving trial work, personal
injury, wrongful death, business representation,
tort litigation, real estate, estate planning,
appellate practice, and insurance defense.
Michael Murphy and Robert Schmitt are fellows
in the prestigious American College of Trial
Lawyers. Cal Fuchs serves as national coordinating
counsel for a Fortune 500 company involved in
nationwide asbestos litigation. Attorneys Lutey,
Murphy, and Schmitt have each served as
president of the State Bar of Arizona. Many of the
firm’s attorneys have served as judges pro tem of
the Arizona Court of Appeals and are founding
fellows of the Arizona Bar Foundation. Each has
contributed numerous hours to statewide and
local civic and charitable organizations.
Attorneys Murphy, Lutey, Schmitt, and Fuchs
are all A-rated lawyers, having been professionally
evaluated as the best in their profession. All of the
firm’s attorneys are members of the State Bar of
Arizona and the Yavapai County Bar and are
admitted to all state and federal courts in Arizona
and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. “What is
most important in today’s world is the way
lawyers treat clients, how they treat the public and
how they treat each other. All of us are committed
to excellence, to doing quality work and to
maintaining the highest ethical standards of
our profession.”
98 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

EL CHAPARRAL
For almost a decade, Don Brambila worked
as a miner, first in Superior, Arizona, and then
in Miami, Arizona, while his wife Sophie raised
the kids. When their youngest son’s asthma
proved too chronic to remain down south, Don
and Sophie headed to Prescott, and Don
returned to mining–this time at the Iron King
Mine in Humboldt. One year later, when Sophie
was pregnant with their fourth child, she came
to an important realization, “I didn’t want him
to work in the mines anymore,” said Sophie, “I
just never knew if Don would be coming home
because the work he did was so dangerous.”
Whether as a paratrooper who participated
in the D-Day invasion or as a miner, Don has
never been afraid to take risks. Surprisingly he
had always dreamed of owning his own
restaurant, even though neither he nor Sophie
had any experience in the field. They called on
Don’s sister, Erma Linda, who was working as a
cook at a Mexican restaurant in Mesa. She
agreed to assist with her culinary skills and
accounting knowledge for a period of six
months. Thus 1959 brought with it the opening
of El Charro Restaurant.
After a very arduous but successful first year,
the Brambilas moved the restaurant from
Sheldon Street to 120 North Montezuma. Then
in 1970, they sold El Charro and opened El
Chaparral at 628 Miller Valley Road. As the
years flew by, all five of Don and Sophie’s
children helped out in the restaurants. In 1983
the Brambilas opened Taco Don’s–now operated
by their son Michael, and in April 2003, Don
and Sophie sold El Chaparral to their son Ken
and his wife Kerrie.
Year after year, El Chaparral has been voted
the “Best of Prescott” for its delicious Mexican
food. “Word of mouth has been very good,” said
Sophie. This full-service restaurant also offers
catering and banquet services.
Above: El Chaparral is located at 628
Miller Valley Road in Prescott.
Below: The spacious dining room at
El Chaparral.
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 99

CHECK
REALTY, INC.
Doug and Ed Bunch have been working
together in real estate since 1979. Doug
purchased the business from his brother and
mentor, Ed. The building of a “positive image”
has continued by keeping the company family
owned. The caring attitude towards their clients
is reflected in the success of the business.
Check Realty, Inc. has grown from their main
office in Prescott to an additional
office location in Prescott Valley.
Ed Bunch manages the Scottsdale
office. Check Realty is a member of
the Multiple Listing Services for
both Yavapai and Maricopa
Counties. The agency has over
thirty experienced agents that are
experts in the field.
From the beginning Check
Realty, Inc. has been about family,
community and friendships. This
involvement has made them a
referral-based company. A warm
invitation is extended to all to
become a part of our mile high
community. Please visit us on the
Internet at www.checkrealty.com or
stop by our office located at 719
White Spar Road in Prescott.
VALLEY DENTAL
EQUIPMENT
COMPANY
Charolette and Steve Farni.
COURTESY OF A PORTRAIT PARK BY JAY.
By the time Steve Farni, a native Iowan,
began Valley Dental Equipment Company
in Prescott, he had gained enough
experience working for three of his
competitors to start his own business. Valley
Dental Equipment Company provides
dentists with all of the dental equipment
they will need—chairs, delivery systems,
lights, sterilization equipment, intra-oral
cameras, and digital x-ray equipment—plus
complete servicing.
Farni also brings to his customers an
invaluable background in construction,
so he is able to work with dentists to
ensure that their office layout and
equipment setup create the perfect work
environment. When Farni and his
wife, Charolette, who is the company’s
office manager, were able to move to
Prescott, it was a dream come true.
Valley Dental Equipment is located at
336 North Rush Street, with a branch
office in Tempe. Both Steve and
Charolette lend their support to area
schools and local charities.
100 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

Trisha’s Li’l Slow Foods Cafe is known for its
made-from-scratch cooking and though Trisha
Bauer says that “all the food is special,” she is
quick to point out her home-fried potatoes,
mouth-watering cinnamon rolls, and the “biggest
and best omelets in town.” Born into a Phoenixbased
family who owned a fish ‘n’ chips place in
the 1950s, Trisha decided early on to follow in
the family trade.
After operating two successful restaurants in
Phoenix, Trisha and her husband Russell packed
up and moved to Prescott. In 1999 they created
Trisha’s Li’l Slow Foods Cafe—a bright, inviting
place with a homey, country feel. Daughter
Brenda Abeyta also lends a hand at the
restaurant, which on a good day can seat as
many as eighty-nine people. Trisha’s Li’l Slow
Foods Cafe is a non-smoking establishment,
open six days a week, except for Tuesdays, from
6 a.m. to 2 p.m.
TRISHA’S
LI’L SLOW
FOODS CAFE
Trisha and Russell Bauer, owners
of Trisha’s Li’l Slow Foods Cafe
located at 443 Miller Valley Road in
Prescott, Arizona.
Prescott Samaritan Communities of Care
was conceived by a group of local pastors
and parishioners in the early 1970s. Their
dream was that of a Christian-based retirement
center and nursing home designed to serve
the needs of older persons in the Prescott
Community. To carry out its mission, the
community group joined
with the Evangelical
Lutheran Good Samaritan
Society of Sioux Falls,
South Dakota.
Samaritan Village Care
Center and Retirement
Apartments opened in
1978, and followed in the
1980s by Casitas (townhomes),
Samaritan HUD
Tower, and Samaritan Care
Companions. In 1997 the
Prescott Valley Samaritan
Center, a nursing home
with a special care unit,
opened, followed by
Willow Wind Assisted
Living Residence in 2001—rounding out a
continuum of care.
The Society’s mission is “to share God’s love
in word and deed by providing shelter and
supportive services to older persons and others
in need, believing that in Christ’s love, everyone
is someone.”
PRESCOTT
SAMARITAN
COMMUNITIES
OF CARE
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 101

KNOT RADIO
Radio station KNOT 1450 AM’s first broadcast
was in 1957, when founder, Bob Baker,
hit the airwaves with a country music format.
The station’s first home was in the basement of
the Hassayampa Inn in Prescott, until it moved
in 1967 to Willow Creek Road. After the
Browning brothers bought the station, the
station relocated one more time to its present
address at 116 South Alto Street.
In 1977 a counterpart, KNOT 98.3 FM, was
added and as the ABC affiliate in this market, it
featured an active rock format. In 1985 the
format was converted and country music was
now simulcast on both stations. KNOT was
then purchased by Bill Payne and later the
Payne family. In the early 1990s, KNOT 1450
AM adopted the ABC Stardust format of
adult contemporary, soft rock, jazz, and
alternate music standards. The FM frequency
was changed to 99.1 and the live country format
was expanded.
KNOT, which is Prescott’s only live station,
is truly Prescott’s voice and hometown
radio station.
SPONSORS
AGR Paving & Sealing, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
The American Ranch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Brown & Brown Insurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Check Realty, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
El Chaparral. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
The Fain Family & Fain Signature Group. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Golden Insurance Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Haley Construction Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Hampton Funeral Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Hampton Inn of Prescott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Hotel St. Michael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
KNOT Radio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
KPPV 107.6 FM “The Mix”
KQNA 1130 AM CNN Headline News Radio . . . . . . . . . 94
The M3 Companies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
MacMillan Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Murphy, Lutey, Schmitt & Fuchs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Northcentral University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
The Palace Hotel & The Jersey Saloon
Relocation Specialists, Llc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Prescott Brewing Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Prescott Chamber of Commerce. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Prescott Lakes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Prescott Newspapers, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Prescott Samaritan Communities of Care . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
R. W. Turner & Sons Pump & Windmill Company . . . . . . . 88
Red Arrow Real Estate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Roxie Webb Securities Management, Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
SpringHill Suites. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Tim’s Buick-Pontiac-GMC-Toyota. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Townsend Construction, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Trisha’s Li’l Slow Foods Cafe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Valley Dental Equipment Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
Yavapai Block & Precast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Yavapai Regional Medical Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Yavapai Title Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
102 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT

INDEX
2 Shoes Ranch, 22
#
A
Abia Judd Elementary School, 43
Acker Music Showcase, 45
adobe, 5, 17
advertising, 15, 18, 20
agriculture, 18, 21
Agua Fria Valley, 49
“All-American City”, 8
American Amateur Softball Association,
27
American Laundry, 20
Anasazi Indians, 24
Anderson, Leroy, 7
Andrews, Don, 51
Antelope Hills Golf Course, 27
Apache Indians, 24, 39, 41
Arcosanti, 13
Arizona Archaeological Society, 25
Arizona Cowpunchers Reunion Association,
54
Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral
Resources, 41
Arizona Miner, 11, 15, 20, 45
Arizona National Guard, 16
Arizona Ore Company, 17
Arizona Pioneer and Historical Society, 18
Arizona Pioneers’ Home, 34, 36
Arizona Rangers, 31
Arizona State Museum, 25
Arizona Territory, 11, 15, 20, 46, 48-49
Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame, 26, 33
Army scouts, 26
Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad
Company, 15, 36, 41, 47, 49
Atlantic and Pacific Railroad Company,
12, 37, 49
Aubrey Street, 8
Aubrey, Francois Xavier, 39
Autry, Gene, 44
Aztec Land and Cattle Co., 30
B
Baca, Marcus, 29
Bagdad, 25, 41
Bank of Arizona, 10-11
Banning Creek, 8
Bar Cross Ranch, 22
Bar O Ranch, 22
Bar-Circle-A Ranch, 43
Barnard, George, 18
Bashford Court, 17
Bashford, Levi, 5, 17
Bashford, William, 51
Bean, Curtis Coe, 40
Bean, May, 30
Bear Paw Bronze Works, 33
beef jerky, 23
Beeler, Joe, 43
Belcher, Ben M., 6
Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, 7
Berry, William J., 18
Best, Joe, 32
Big Bug Station see Mayer
Bill Williams Mountain Men, 23
Bird Cage, 8
Bison Ranch, 53
Bivens, Andy see Cooper, Andy
Black Canyon Stage Company, 14
Blair, S. E., 30
Bland-Allison Act, 16
Borglum, Solon, 34
Bradshaw Mountains, 30, 40-41,
48-49
Broncius, “Curly” Bill, 30
bronco, 50, 54
bronze foundries, 32
Bronzesmith Foundry, 32
Brow, Bob, 6
Brownlow, Gheral, 28
Bucky’s Casino, 26
Bullion Theory, 16
Bullock, Tom, 47
Bullwacker Hill, 46
Burke Hotel, 10
Burmister, A., 51
Butterfield Overland Stage Company, 17
C
Cal Jackson & Company, 17
California Volunteer Army Corps, 17
California Volunteers, 39
Cambridge, New Zealand, 27
Carleton Street, 46
Carleton, James H., 39, 46
Carnegie, Andrew, 7
Carson, Kit, 39
casinos, 26
cattle, 11, 17, 21-23, 30-31
Central Pacific Railroad Company, 19
“champagne on tap”, 17
chaparral, 23
Cheap John’s Store, 17
Cherry Creek, 49
Chino Valley, 13, 15, 34
Cinco de Mayo, 20
Citizens Cemetery, 29, 46
Civil Works Administration, 26, 33, 46
Clark, William, 41
Cob Web Hall, 6
Cole, William, 30
Colorado River, 16, 41
Commerce Street, 5
Congregational Church, 20, 44
Congress (Arizona), 40
Cooper, Andy, 30
Cooper, John (J. T.), 28
copper, 12, 14, 25, 32, 40-41, 49
Cordes Junction, 13
Coronado Street, 46
Coronado, Francisco Vasquez, 46
Cortez Street, 5, 10, 15, 18
Cortez, Hernan, 5
Cory, Kate, 34, 36
Cottonwood/Clarkdale, 13
Cowboy Artists of America Association,
33, 43
Cowboy Carnival, 50
Cowboy Poetry Gathering, 45
Cowboy Tournament, 50-51
cowboys, 9, 22-23, 30
Cowboys, 30
Cowboys’ Turtle Association, 53
credit, 16
crime, 29, 30
Cross U Ranch, 22
Crown King, 49
Cummings, Mary, 36
Custer, Jim Bob, 52
D
Daggs brothers, 31
Davis, Olin, 8
de Alarcón, Herman, 5
de Anza, Juan Bautista, 24
Del Rio Springs, 13
Depot Shopping Center, 49
Desert Classic Rally, 8
Dewey, 25, 27, 35
Diamond 2 Ranch, 22
Dinner Bell, 18
doctors, 35-38
Doña Mariña, 5
drought, 19, 24
Dumbbell Ranch, 22
Dye, Charlie, 43
Dykeman Art Foundry, 32
E
Ehrenberg, 16
Eleventh Infantry Band, 45
Elks Theater and Opera House, 18, 37,
42-43
Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, 34
Emergency Relief Administration, 46
Evans, Pat, 51
F
Fat, George Ah, 20
Feldman, Michael, 8
Ferry, Dexter, 48
Field, Marshall, 48
First Interstate Bank, 23
Fisher, Captain, 6
Flinn, John W., 37
floods, 20
Florence, 44
Fort Whipple, 6, 11, 13, 17, 24, 26,
35-39, 45-46, 50
freight, 18, 35, 49
Fremont, John Charles, 11
Frontier Day, 50
Frontier Days, 43, 45, 50-54
Frontier Village, 26
G
Galazan, George, 34
Gardner, James I., 15-16
Geary Act, 20
George, Henry, 12
“giant powder”, 9
Girls Rodeo Association, 54
Globe, 30
gold panning, 39, 41
Goldwater Lake, 8, 27
Goldwater Mercantile, 16
Goldwater, Barry, 25, 44
Goldwater, Julia K., 7
Goldwater, Morris, 16, 51
golf, 27
Goodwin Street, 8-9, 18-20, 46
Goodwin, John N., 46
Grace Sparkes Memorial Activity Center,
46
Graham family, 30-31
Graham, John, 30
Graham, Thomas, 30-31
Grand Canyon National Game Preserve,
32
Granite Basin Lake, 27
Granite Creek, 15, 20, 39-40, 46
Granite Dells, 2, 43-44, 47-49
Granite Mountain Middle School, 43
Granite Street, 8, 19-20
“granny medicine”, 37
Great Depression, 8, 14, 46
Green Frog, 18
Groom Creek Drive-In, 18
Grove Street, 8
Gurley Street, 6-8, 10, 17, 43, 46
Gurley Street Bridge, 17
Gurley, John A., 46
H
Hall, Sharlot, 33-34, 36, 41
Hampton, John, 43
hangings, 11, 15, 29
Hassayampa Country Club, 27
Hassayampa Hotel, 8
Hassayampa Inn, 18, 42
Hazeltine, Moses, 8
Heap, Harry, 8
Hicks, Charles P., 31
Hohokam Indians, 24
Hoof & Horn, 11
Hopi Indians, 24, 28, 33-34
Hopman, Joanie, 51
Hotel St. Michael, 8, 10, 18
Hotel Vendome, 43
Howe, Woodbury, 29
Howler, 10
Humboldt, 48, 49
I
immigration laws, 20
Indian schools, 26
investing, 15, 17, 40-41
Irwin, John N., 48
J
Jackson, Calvin, 17
Jarred Webb Foundry, 32
javelina, 23
Jerome, 13-14, 24-25, 41, 48-49
Jerome, Eugene, 41
Jimulla, Lucy, 6
Jimulla, Sam, 6, 26
Jimulla, Viola, 6, 26
Jones, Buck, 44
Jones, Ernie, Sr., 26
Juniper House, 45
Justin Sports Medicine Program, 51
K
Kerr’s Cheap Store, 18
King’s Ruins, 25
Kingman, 14
Kino, Eusebio Francisco, 54
Krol, Natalie, 32
KYCA, 8
L
LaGuardia, Achille, 45
LaGuardia, Fiorello, 6, 45
Leroux Street, 5
Lincoln Avenue, 46
Lincoln, Abraham, 11, 40, 46
Littig, John, 30
log cabins, 5
Lonesome Valley, 48
Long Wah Co., 17
Lubin Film Company, 45
Lucero, Felix, 34
Lynx Creek, 17, 34, 40, 48-49
Lynx Creek Gold & Land Company, 40
Lynx Lake, 27
M
Man Against Horse Race, 28
Marina Street, 36
Marion, John Huguenot, 15
marriage laws, 20
Mayer, 12, 14, 48
McCormick Street, 46
McCormick, Richard Cunningham, 15, 46
Meadows, Charlie, 51
Mercy Hospital, 36
midwives, 38
Miller Valley, 17
Miller, Jacob Leroy, 17
Miller, Sam, 17
Mingus Lake, 27
Mingus Mountain, 28
mining, 5, 11-12, 15-16, 19, 30, 35,
40-41, 48, 49
Mix, Tom, 37, 42, 43, 44
Sharing the Heritage ✦ 103

Mogollon Mountains, 31
Monday Club, 6
Money Magazine, 8
Monihon, James D., 18
Montezuma Street, 5, 9-10, 20
Montezuma, Carlos, 36
Moore, Job, 17
Mormon Battalion, 39
Mormon Dairy, 29
movies, 44
Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, 37
Mt. Vernon Street, 5, 45
Mulvenon, William, 31
Murphy, Frank, 48
Murphy, Nathan O., 31
Murphy’s Restaurant, 16
Myers, Leonard, 29
N
narcotics, 37
New York Cheap Store, 17
Noggle, Joe, 32
Northern Arizona Health Care System, 38
O
O’Neill, Maurice, 11
O’Neill, William O. (Buckey), 11-12, 34,
46
Oldfield, Barney, 8
Oñate, Juan de, 24
Order of St Joseph of Carondelete, 36
Otis, T. W., 20
Out Our Way, 45
Oxley Ruin, 25
P
Palace Bar, 6-9, 42, 44
Paleo-Indians, 24
PAMSETGAAF, 37
Pardee, Doc, 53
Parsons, W. C., 36
Payne, Gabriel, 45
Peavine Railroad, 48
Phippen Museum of Western Arts,
33-34, 43
Phippen, George, 33, 43-44
Phippen, Harold, 33
Phoenix, 18, 29, 41, 48
Pickett, Bill, 54
Pima Indians, 36
Pine Cone Inn, 18
Pioneer Cemetery, 36
Pishon, Nathaniel J., 40
pithouses, 25
Plaza Feed and Livery Stable, 18
Plaza Restaurant, 18
Plaza, The, 5, 7-10, 12, 17-18, 33-34,
42-45, 52
Pleasant Street, 10
Pleasant Valley, 30-31
Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for
Deliberative Assemblies, 46
Point of Rocks see Granite Dells
Poland, 48
Poolheco, Dennis, 28
population, 5, 11, 16, 19, 30, 40
Potter, Wayland, 44
pottery, 25, 34, 42
Prescott and Arizona Central Railroad
Company, 16, 49
Prescott Armory, 46
Prescott Brass Band, 45
Prescott Chamber of Commerce, 46
Prescott College, 25, 34
Prescott Community Hospital, 38
Prescott Daily Journal-Miner, 15
Prescott Downs, 27
Prescott Evening Courier, 15, 22
Prescott Fine Arts Association, 33-34
Prescott Fort Whipple Military District, 35
Prescott Frontier Days Association, 51
Prescott Gateway Mall, 46
Prescott Mining Company, 40
Prescott Morning Courier, 15
Prescott National Bank, 16
Prescott Public Library, 7
Prescott Rodeo Committee, 54
Prescott Tuberculosis Sanatorium, 46
Prescott Valley, 14, 27, 32, 38
Prescott Yavapai Indian Reservation, 26,
46
Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association,
53-54
Prohibition, 7, 18, 20
prospectors, 11, 19, 35, 40
Public Library, 43
queue (braid), 20
R
Rafters, Steve, 28
Ranch House, 18
Rangeland Sports, 50
real estate, 15
Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 38
restaurants, 18
retail prices, 16, 18
Rich Hill, 39
Rimrock Ranch, 48
Ringo, Johnny, 30
Rio Verde Reservation, 24
Ritter, Dorothy Southworth, 44
Ritter, Tex, 44
Robb, Charles, 6
Roberts, Henry, 46
Roberts’ Rules of Order, 46
Rodeo Cowboy Association, 53
Rodeo’s Rules of Wide Fame, 53
Rogers, E. A., 15
Rogers, Will, 45, 54
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 18
Roosevelt, Theodore, 12, 32
Rough Riders, 11-12, 34, 45
Rudkowski, Daiton, 16
Ruffner, Lester Ward (Budge), 22, 53
Runk, T. J., 29
rustlers, 22, 30-31
Q
S
Sacred Heart Catholic Church, 33-34
saloons, 6-7, 9-10, 16-17, 19-20, 47-48
Salt River, 29
San Carlos Apache Reservation, 24
Santa Fe Depot, 47, 49
Santa Fe, Prescott, and Phoenix Railway
Company, 10, 48-49
Schnebly, Theodore, 14
schools, 5, 18, 20, 23, 26
Scopel Hotel, 9
Sedona, 13-14, 43
Seitz Office City, 20
Selig Polyscope, 43
Selig, William N., 43
Seligman, 47-48
Sharlot Hall Museum, 33, 45
Sheldon Street, 29, 49
Sheldon Street Electric Company, 10
Shrine of Saint Joseph of the Mountains,
34
Sieber, Al, 41
Sinagua Indians, 24
Sisters of Mercy, 36
Skull Valley, 18, 32-33, 43, 49
Skurja Art Castings, 32
Skurja, John, 32
Smith, Barney, 6
Smith, Jedediah, 39
Smoki Museum, 18, 25-26, 33-34
Smoki People, 24, 33
softball, 27
Soleri, Paolo, 13
Sonora-Arizona border, 19
Southern Pacific Railroad Company, 41,
48
Spanish-American War, 12, 45
Sparkes, Grace, 6, 46, 53
Sportsman’s Emporium, 18
Spring Valley see Miller Valley
St. Johns, 29
St. Joseph’s Academy, 36
statehood, 6-7, 29
Stilton, Burton, 45
stock contractor, 52
Stover, S., 29
Sullivan, Louis, 42
Sundog Ranch, 25
Sundown Site, 25
Sundown, Jackson, 54
Swastika Mine, 30
Swetnam, James M., 21
T
Tailholt Ranch, 22
Tatum, Dick, 52
Taylor Grazing Act, 22
Tewksbury family, 30-31
Tewksbury, John, 30
Thompson, John James, 14
Thompson, Sedona, 14
Three Persons, Tom, 54
Thumb Butte, 5-6, 8
Thumb Butte Bronze, 32
timelines, 43
Tony the Wonder Horse, 42, 44
traditional rituals (Chinese), 20
Treadwell, George, 41
tunnels, 7
U
U.S. Department of Mineral Lands and
Mining, 40
U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement
Division, 31
United Verde Copper Company, 41
V
Verde Queen Company, 41
Verde River, 27
Verde Valley, 13, 21, 38, 43
Verde Valley Medical Center, 38
Veterans Affairs Hospital, 35, 38
Victorian homes, 5, 44-45
Viele, Francis, 8
Vulture Mining Works, 19
W
Walker Prospecting and Mining Company,
40
Wallace, Agnes McKee, 37
Walnut Grove, 18
Wassaja see Montezuma, Carlos
water rights, 30, 40
water systems, 8, 10, 18, 40
Watson Lake, 2, 27
Weaver, Paulino, 39
Whipple Street, 32, 46
Whiskey Row, 6-10, 18, 44, 47-48, 50, 52
Whiskey Row Fire, 9-10, 34, 45
Wickenburg, 19, 39
Wildman, Fran, 33, 43
Williams, A. C., 27
Williams, “Old” Bill, 39
Williams, Floyd, 6
Williams, J. R., 45
Williamson Valley, 18, 25
Willis Street, 15
Willow Creek, 18
Willow Lake, 27
Wilson, Woodrow, 34, 41
Winslow, 36
wolves, 44
Women’s Club of Prescott, 6
Woolsey, King, 21
work clothes, 21
Works Progress Administration, 8, 18, 38,
46
“World’s Oldest Rodeo”, 54
Wormser, Michael, 17
Wright, Frank, 17
Wright’s Prescott Electric Telephone
Company, 6, 10
Y
Y4 Ranch, 22
Yarnell, 14, 34
Yarnell, Harrison, 14
Yavapai baskets, 42, 43
Yavapai College, 8, 34
Yavapai Community Hospital, 38
Yavapai County Chamber of Commerce,
25, 50
Yavapai County Courthouse, 5, 8, 18, 34,
45
Yavapai County Fair Association, 50
Yavapai County Medical Society, 37
Yavapai Downs, 27
Yavapai Indians, 24-26, 36, 39, 42-43
Yavapai Regional Medical Center, 38
Yavapai Regional Medical Clinic
Del E. Webb Outpatient Center, 38
Yolo Ranch, 22
Yount, Clarence, Sr., 37
Yount, Florence, 37-38
Z
Zulick, Conrad, 47
104 ✦ HISTORIC PRESCOTT Index ✦ 104

ISBN: 1-893619-27-3