Anecdotes of Prescott History Brought to Life From the Pages of Old Newspapers and Other Sources.
“Saturday, April 25, 1885, 3:40 PM: The town of Ash Fork is now on fire,” the Albuquerque Evening Democrat proclaimed. “So far nine buildings are in ashes…”
“A telegram was received at Fort Whipple announcing the almost entire destruction of the town of Ash Fork,” the Tulare County (California) newspaper pronounced.
“The greater part of the town was destroyed,” the Sacramento Union declared.
Before the arrival of the railroad on January 1, 1887, prices for groceries, travel, and nearly everything else were astonishingly high, and travel times were lengthy.
Here are some staple food items and what they would cost at today’s (2026) prices:
The Petrified Forest was never a secret, but initially, it was not widely known outside of Arizona (except among geologists, among whom news of the remarkable site spread quickly). North of the first known deposits, adjacent to the Santa Fe Atlantic-Pacific railroad, was Adam Hanna’s cattle ranch. It was at this point that he would found the town of Adamana—the old gateway to the Petrified Forest.
In 1870, Chino Valley had a handful of ranches, plenty of open space, and occasional visits from fearsome Native Americans.
When whites first came to the Prescott area, the place known to us as the Granite Dells was first called Point of Rocks. The first newspaper mention of the Granite Dells was in 1887. It was the name given to James and Thomas Wing’s ranch. They knew they held some of the most beautiful land in the area, and they set out to turn it into the first Granite Dells Resort.
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.
Some Yavapai County townsites were as speculative as the mineral worth of the ground they stood on. Two towns had particularly short existences: the oil town of Heslet in Chino Valley, and what could be described as a suburb of Jerome named Oxford.
Several western towns were known for gambling: Tombstone, Deadwood, and Dodge City, for example. But if one were able to go back in time and ask the “sporting men” of the West, Prescott would be among the very best places to play. Gambling was immensely popular in the early days of Prescott. An 1884 account in the Weekly Arizona Miner proclaimed, “Faro dealers say that Prescott is the best gambling town in the West.”
Theodore Weld (TW) Otis was a prominent and well-respected Prescott pioneer who served the community as a judge, a coroner, and a postmaster. He speculated in mining, real estate, and was a retail proprietor. He was a pious, charitable Christian and a teetotaling advocate for prohibition.
The businesses on Gurley then were largely different from those today.
Its name could be confusing to modern readers. It was a large hall in the city, so the owner, George W Curtis, named it “City Hall”. However, make no mistake, Prescott’s municipal government had nothing to do with it and never used it.
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 object of the organizers [of the Yavapai Club] was to induce a healthful mingling of recreation, pleasure, and business, and the object has been most successfully attained to the advantage of the club and of Prescott,” the Weekly Journal-Miner declared. “Important business enterprises, many of them of a quasi-public character, have been launched after excellent dinners, or in the course of enjoyable smokers, [when marijuana was imbibed.] Millionaire capitalists, statesmen of worldwide reputation, railroad magnates, distinguished authors, and captains of industry have been pleased guests of the Yavapai Club.” Indeed, during the first quarter of the 20th century, the Yavapai Club was the heart and soul of the business and social community of the county, which bore its name.
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| Diana Saloon on the left, Gurley St. on the right, (Thumb Butte in the Middle). |
Before 1914, the 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.
Before the Plaza fountain we know today was constructed in 1910, the Plaza had a “Mineral Fountain” (pictured above). Along its outside boundary were a number of what the Weekly Arizona Journal-Miner described as “peculiar red rock[s]…about which there has been much speculation as to what [they are].”
“The rock is peculiar in that it is susceptible of a good polish and it contains practically no grit," the paper continued, and is very soft, as it can be whittled with a knife like a piece of chalk. When the fountain was being built, this rock attracted general attention from all who saw it, but no one seemed able to classify it.”
Then, in April 1903, two investigators identified the source of these peculiar rocks, not too far from Prescott. They gathered samples to take to several different assayers, and what they found was a great surprise to everyone.
The town of Clarkdale was a pet project for Senator William A Clark, owner of the United Verde mine in Jerome. It was the first planned community in Arizona and included all the makings of a modern town. It provided telephone, telegraph, electrical, sewer, and spring water services for its residents. Situated at the bottom of Cleopatra Mountain, it would be the smelter town for the mines of Jerome and the surrounding area. “To build a perfect town [was] to be the aim and ambition of former Sen. Clark,” the Mohave County Miner wrote, “and money will be lavishly spent to make it as near [perfect] as possible.”
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| The Miner Office 1866 |
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| Officer's Quarters Ft. Whipple (1871) |
As 1873 dawned, the Weekly Arizona Miner lamented that Arizona was “about the only great geographical division of the Union that is not now connected with the Capital of said Union…by telegraph.” Indeed, Lt.-Gen. George R. Crook, the man in charge of fighting in the Indian Conflicts, requested that the War Department build a telegraph line from California into the Arizona Territory in 1871. However, by 1873, Crook had already made peace with the Apaches, and the “Indian Wars,” as they were called, were winding down. Yet the wiring of Arizona to the rest of civilization would still be of great benefit in case of conflict from Mexico, and Arizona “would no longer be isolated,” the Miner observed.
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| 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.”
