Prescott's Airport is Dedicated to Ernest Love (1928)

It was a far-sighted Dan Fain who offered a square mile of land north of Prescott for use as an airport under a ten-year lease. Previously, “aeroplanes” would have to search for a suitable, level place to land, sometimes using Prescott’s target range. But in its earliest days, Prescott’s airport was little more than a cow range littered with prairie dog holes.

So when an Army airplane circled Prescott unable to locate the airport, it was obvious that improvements were needed. This prompted the Kiwanis club to appoint an aviation committee for this purpose, which the Chamber of Commerce adopted as its aviation committee as well, and improvements started quickly.

The Forgotten Pioneer & His Lost Gold

Nathaniel S “Boston” Graves died January 12, 1911, at the age of 88. He was “one of the earliest arrivals in this section of the Territory and also one of the most popularly known miners,” the Weekly Journal Miner explained. “He was more familiarly known as Boston.” He took ill with the flu (or grippe as it was called back then) late in 1910, having spent that year searching for “a ‘pothole’ that contained a vast amount of free gold.”

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 First President to Visit Yavapai County

The Weekly Journal-Miner and the residents of Yavapai County were absolutely enchanted. The President of the United States, William McKinley, would be visiting the Arizona Territory, and his first step upon the young territory’s soil would be in Yavapai County!

Rattlesnake Stories of Yavapai County

An Arizona Black Diamond Rattlesnake

Where there are rattlesnakes, there are bound to be some interesting and amazing stories, and Yavapai County is no exception.

Christmas Celebrations in Isolated Mining Camps, 1903

Iron King Mine

Despite being isolated in the wilderness of Arizona, mining camps still enjoyed wondrous and touching Christmas celebrations in 1903.

Disaster! Four Yavapai County Banks Fail on 11/25/1925

November 25, 1925, was a disastrous day in Yavapai County. Four banks suddenly and permanently closed their doors, and people’s deposits were frozen and unavailable—a mere month before Christmas!

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.

Miller Valley Founders Arrested & Bankrupt

 

To most people in Yavapai County and even the entire Arizona territory, the news produced a shock as great as an earthquake. 

On March 1, 1878, Samuel C (“SC”) Miller, along with his brother Jacob (“Jake,”) was arrested, causing “great excitement here in financial circles,” the Phoenix Weekly Herald reported. “They are charged with endeavoring to put property out of their hands with intent to defraud creditors. Much of their business seems to have been transacted in a loose way.” Those who were owed money by the brothers rushed to court, and the pair were declared insolvent and bankrupt.

How Did Prescott's Plaza Become Yavapai County Property? UPDATED

How is it that the very heart of Prescott—its downtown Plaza—happened to become property of Yavapai County? 

When queried, even local historians were unable to explain why. One former county supervisor suggested that the beautifully-shaded, rectangle-shaped parcel always belonged to Yavapai County. However, research shows that nothing could be further from the truth…

The Snow-Mageddon of '67!

Consensus knows that Prescott gets snow, but it seldom lasts long—often melting away before evening. This was the reasoning behind the city selling off its “excess” snow removal equipment. But then in mid-December 1967, a below-freezing cold-snap accompanied by four waves of heavy snow eventually produced 72 inches with drifts measuring up to 10 feet. 

Ironically, it was the city of Phoenix that sent ten snowplows, at its own expense, to help with the crisis.

The Forgotten, Lost Town of Val Verde

 

The evening of September 24, 1904, was windy, and the smelter’s open building provided some relief from the heat of the furnace. Around 9pm, as part of their routine, workers wet down the furnace and began to remove, or “undrape” the liquid slag. This time, however, there was too much of the by-product, and the slag poured out of the furnace too quickly for the men to control it. 

“It spread over the floor, in front of the smelter,” the Weekly Journal-Miner explained, “and the molten slag, coming in contact with the water, caused [an] explosion, sending the hot metal all through the building; setting it on fire in a number of places.” While there was an abundance of water on hand, it was impossible to check the progress of the blaze as the strong winds fanned the flames. 

Not only was the building doomed, but so was the five-year-old town of Val Verde. 

A Grave Robber's Remarkable Find

Meet John Love. In his day, at the turn of the last century, he was known as a “relics prospector.” Today he would easily be considered a grave robber. “Those who come in contact with him dub him queer, eccentric, etc., explaining that he was struck on the head in early youth by an iron bar and has suffered more or less seriously since,” the Arizona Republican reported. Still, the same paper also described him as “John Love, the well-known searcher for prehistoric relics…”

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.

Tornados in Yavapai County?

Arizona is known for straight-line winds, red flag warnings, and dust devils that can be strong enough to create tornado-like destruction, but actual tornadoes? Indeed, there have been rare times when the Quad-Cities area fell victim to genuine twisters.

Pleistocene Prescott Valley

It was 1984 on the Fain ranch near the headwaters of the Aqua Fria River when A. Jordan peered into a 13-foot deep arroyo and noticed a partial skeleton of a mammoth. 

Soon, paleontologists from the Arizona Archeological Society, Yavapai College, Sharlot Hall Museum, and Northern Arizona University were busy unearthing the remains. Their work would also uncover the remains of three additional large mammals: a horse, a bison, and a camel.

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.

Yavapai County's Wild Fruits & Their Medicinal Uses

 

What did the first pioneers eat? Basically, whatever they could get their hands on! Fortunately, Yavapai County’s diverse ecosystem includes many fruits that grow in the wild. Here is a listing with pictures and the lore surrounding their medicinal uses:

Constant Indian Raids, Spring 1870

1870 dawned with the usual optimism of a new year in Prescott, but underneath lay a sense of anxiety. The first edition of the 1870 Weekly Arizona Miner wrote: “Our inveterate foes—the Indians— have been on their good behavior for a number of weeks past, and have not recommenced hostilities, hereabouts. But judging from the fact that they have commenced swarming around many settlements, we fear that, ere long, they will commence their business of killing and plundering, and we advise our people to be on the lookout for them.”

The newspaper would have done well to tell its readers not to travel alone and double their herders. For it was the Indians' strategy to begin a campaign of ambushing lone travelers and lightly guarded stock.

Nuclear Testing Affected Prescott UPDATED

For those back east, it meant troubling news stories, but for residents of the southwest, the Cold War was much more tangible. It was a time when Prescott residents would occasionally be awakened to the ground shaking and an orange glow in the western sky from nuclear testing at Nevada’s Yucca Flat Proving Ground.