Prior to 1914, December Prescott newspapers would be heavily sprinkled with short blurbs describing various Christmas activities around town. But with the start of World War 1 on July 28, 1914, the paper's attention turned to the Great War in Europe, even though America would not enter it until sixteen months later. Despite the lack of coverage surrounding Christmas, Prescott still celebrated.
Santa came to town December 25, 1915, “behind his sixteen galloping reindeer to the merry chiming of sleigh bells; and hitching the prancing animals to a corner of the [Yavapai] club building, plumped right down the chimney and into the room where his grown-up friends were awaiting him,” the Weekly Journal-Miner described. “Where are [the children]? I’m mighty anxious to see them, and I know they’re mighty anxious to see me. So, if it’s all the same to you, I’ll go right in where they are just as soon as I spruce up a bit and melt the icicles out o’ my beard and hair.”
He soon opened up the doors to the club’s ballroom where the children were waiting. “My, what a shout went up when [Santa] appeared among them,” the paper continued. The jolly old saint went around the room shaking hands with each child, calling everyone by their names.
Likewise every adult was greeted as well. “For the soul of a child looked out of the eyes of every grown-up there, and Santa Claus knows a kid even if” they seem all grown up.
After the salutations were completed, the distribution of gifts began. “There was a present for every eager little hand and a bag of goodies for every eager little mouth.” The paper worried that there would be more than one tummy ache that night.
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Yet a bigger gift that would benefit the entire community was announced around Christmastime. The Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company would be taking over those utilities and investing approximately $40,000 (or $1.22 million in today’s money.) “A complete new system of poles and wiring which will be about eight miles in length, is to be installed,” the Journal-Miner described. All of the poles would be new, painted, and erected in the town’s alleys.
The old wires were not insulated, and bad weather too often shut down the utility. “No open wires, and real first class service, is the idea behind the proposal” that only required the approval of Mayor Timerhoff after the town council gave him he power to do so.
Mountain Bell kept the old phone office and operating room in the Masonic Temple building. Leading from there would be “600 feet of conduit carrying three [large] cables containing 400 pairs of wires apiece. From this, the cables will be carried to the poles, branching out in all parts of the city,” the paper said. 1200 separate phones could eventually be serviced by this improvement.
Five of the eight miles of cable carried between 15 to 200 pairs of wires, and surrounded the greater downtown area. The other three miles led to “the sparsely settled districts,” the Journal-Miner explained. This new “cable system” was expected to increase efficiency by over 50%.
The previous system “was installed in 1901 by Frank L Wright,” the paper chronicled. “At that time Prescott had two competing telephone companies which were merged in 1904 [and called] the Prescott Electric Co. Six years later it was sold to AT&T, which then sold it to the Denver-based Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co.
It was hoped that the new system would be up and running sometime in Spring as the 20th Century began to take hold in our mile-high town.
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SOURCES:
Weekly Journal-Miner; 12/15/1915, Pg. 4, Col. 7.
Weekly Journal-Miner; 12/29/1915, Pg. 4, Col. 7.
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