1922: Prescott Turns the Page on the Old West

From its beginning and for the better part of a century, Prescott desired to be a modern city in stark contrast to the surrounding wilderness. Come 1922, people had grown weary of streets that were either dusty or muddy, and the desire was strong to dust off Prescott’s cowtown image and replace it with a modern, 20th-century city. As a result, 1922 would see the biggest infrastructure improvements the city would ever experience, as well as Prescott’s first big growth spurt.

William Randolph Hearst brings 15 Congressmen to Prescott

(Forgive the typo!)

In 1903, William Randolph Hearst was a 40 year-old newspaper baron and US Congressman from New York who was under serious consideration for the Democratic nomination for President the following year. He desired statehood for the southwestern territories of Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona and took a delegation of other congressmen and their wives on a whirlwind trip through those three large land masses to find evidence that they were worthy of statehood to bring back to Washington.

On the 17th of October, the special train would stop in Prescott and he would be completely surprised at what he found.