The Great Fire Changed the Plaza Forever

Before the Great Fire of July 14, 1900, the Courthouse Plaza was described as a “desolate and neglected waste.” The white rail fence surrounding it was beyond repair, and the Weekly Journal-Miner called for its removal five years earlier. 

It was the Great Fire that brought an end to the fence. Not by burning, but by being knocked down and tossed aside as businesses set up shanties and other temporary structures upon the Plaza while the destruction was cleared away, and the downtown buildings familiar and historic to us today were constructed.

The Embezzling Yavapai County Treasurer

Prescott was aghast when the Yavapai County Treasurer, James P Storm, was found bound and gagged in the county’s vault by his daughter, who heard him kicking the vault door when she arrived for work there on the morning of November 9, 1904.

Jerome's Great Fire of 1898

One year before the fire;
almost all of this would be destroyed.

The Journal-Miner described it as “one of the greatest calamities in the loss of human lives and destruction of property that has ever occurred in the territory, and it may also be said in the West.”

Robert Todd Lincoln Visited Prescott Thrice

It was early February 1894 when the announcement was made in the Journal-Miner that Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln, would be visiting Prescott the following month. Accompanying Lincoln were three millionaires from Chicago: Marshall Field, “the many times millionaire” department store mogul; NK Fairbanks, the millionaire meat-packer; and Norman Ream, a manufacturer of agricultural implements.

The trip was extremely important to Yavapai County at a time when capital was needed to develop both mines and railroads, and it would ultimately be the first of three visits by Lincoln.

1888: Prescott's Great Fire Before the Great Fire

Many who are familiar with Prescott history are aware of the Great Fire, which occurred on July 14, 1900, and destroyed Whiskey Row. However, twelve years earlier, there was another great fire that wiped out Cortez Street.

It all started with an ill-fated plan to blow the safe at TW Otis’ store. The burglars entered the establishment, under the cover of darkness, shortly after midnight on July 1st, and planted some dynamite around the store’s safe. Concerned that the noise from the blast would sound an alarm, the would-be thieves covered the safe with burlap gunny sacks. They then lit the fuse and scurried out of the building to avoid injury.

The Chinese Den of Iniquity

 

No one knows what the business was actually named. A Sanborn-Perris mapmaker identified it only as “Chinese” in 1895. 

This writer might have considered it “The Chinese Entertainment House,” but authors of the archeological report, "Celestials and Soiled Doves..." used biblical verbiage to describe it as a “den of iniquity.” Specifically, it was found to be a “gambling parlor/saloon/opium den/drugstore, [that] filled many needs.”

Archeological Survey at 140 N. Granite St.

In 1994, 16 people from the Yavapai Chapter of the Arizona Archeological Society spent over 400 hours investigating the lot at 140 North Granite St.

“The team of dust-caked investigators found building foundations and artifacts seven feet below street level,” the Courier reported. Although nothing particularly mysterious or unexpected was located, the excavation did offer insights into everyday life and what happened with some of the tons of waste material from the Great Fire of 1900.