1910: Shootout in Downtown Mayer

T.F. Averill had “long been known as a resolute and desperate man,” the newspaper wrote, and he was now infuriated with a Mayer saloon owner named Charles Wells. He told nearly everyone he came across that he intended to kill Wells at noon on September 29, 1910.

What Yavapai County Has Sent to the Smithsonian

Yavapai County has sent hundreds of thousands of items to the Smithsonian Institution; most of these are insects and indigenous artifacts, but several other intriguing and occasionally mysterious items have been sent there as well. The most interesting of these are the items that the Institute had never seen before.

Mayer Onyx Was Unique, Beautiful, World Famous (Updated)

As Professor Price sat on the train, he looked again at the sample of onyx sent to him from Mayer, Arizona. So impressed was he by the beautiful sample and the accounts of its source that he was now on his way from San Francisco to see the deposit for himself.

When the train pulled into the station at Mayer, he looked out the window and was astonished at what he saw. Previously, all known deposits of onyx had come in the form of boulders and smaller rocks and were mined. However, this Mayer onyx was part of the natural strata of the earth! It could be cut into blocks of nearly any size, like sandstone or granite! (*1)

Indeed, this was no boulder of onyx. This single deposit covered nearly two-thirds of a square mile and ran from 10 to 20 feet deep! It was more factual to call Mayer an onyx quarry. Nothing like this had ever been found before.

Before departing, Prof. Price found an onyx-rich tract of land that had not yet been claimed and quickly procured it for himself.