The Petrified Forest was never a secret, but initially, it was not widely known outside of Arizona (except among geologists, among whom news...

Some Yavapai County townsites were as speculative as the mineral worth of the ground they stood on. Two towns had particularly short existen...

  The evening of September 24, 1904, was windy, and the smelter’s open building provided some relief from the heat of the furnace. Around 9p...

Stanton, Arizona, is not open to the public or tourists. Instead, it is owned, operated, and occupied by the Lost Dutchman's Mining Asso...

“It was a piteous scene and remarkable in the extreme,” the Journal-Miner observed. Harrison Yarnell (for whom Yarnell, Arizona, is named) s...

Oro Belle Mine & Mill in the Bradshaw Mountains It was Autumn, 1863. Prescott had not yet been founded. William Bradshaw and a gro...

Many are familiar with the mining riches that came out of Tip Top and Crown King,  but there was another mother-load of gold in that area...

Daniel B Gillette needed a mill for his Tip-Top mines, and the mill needed water. He found a spot 6 miles away on the Aqua Fria River. In...

Wagoner, Arizona, was the kind of town that Hollywood loves portraying. There were outlaws, gold, guns, fights ,  and killings.   Like...

Many are familiar with the first building in Prescott, and the oldest surviving log cabin in Arizona, “Fort Misery.”  Then there was...

Main Street in Zonia as seen in the 1960s Place name books that cover Arizona show no listing for the small ghost town of Zonia. Google ...

It was December 20th, 2004, when Dewey and Humboldt were wedded through incorporation. Although the two experienced vastly different upbri...

Joseph Mayer It was with a small amount of irony that Joseph Mayer's funeral was held in Prescott. For it was a fateful trip to th...

In this edition of "Stories Behind the Names," we look at:  Prescott, Chino Valley, Paulden, Drake, Hell Canyon, Ash Fork, and ...

Charles P Stanton in front of his hotel. NOTICE: This article is effectively retired.  Four years after this article was publish...

Arizona has some interesting and colorful place names. Here are four from around the greater Prescott National Forest area: Wilhoit, A...