Anecdotes of Prescott History Brought to Life From the Pages of Old Newspapers and Other Sources.
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.
It was late autumn 1900 when a minor cave-in occurred in the giant United Verde mine in Jerome. On December 3, as workers cleared the mess, they were astonished to find a newly exposed cave that contained a mysterious gravesite falloff artifacts. “It was with wonder and awe that the workmen first entered the cave and handled the relics that must have been laid away centuries [ago],” the Jerome News described, adding that it created quite an excitement in the copper town.
The Weekly Arizona Miner was shocked. “The Indians…commenced the most daring, vigorous, persistent, and may we add, successful raids against the whites of this section that we have ever known or heard of them to make.” The newspaper was referring to a series of four raids in as many days. “And in every instance,” the paper continued, “ [they] have come out winners in the game of life and death.”
It started in late October 1868. “Our people have been in a high state of excitement ever since our wily foes started upon this, their most brilliant campaign,” the paper declared.
A Journal-Miner editorial described the second Pioneers Home supervisor, Percy V Coldwell, as “a malodorous individual, infecting this city, [whose] loyalty long ago ceased to be a virtue and degenerated into a vice, the stench of which has caused people here to hold their hands on their noses.”
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.
When it was announced that the narrow single-lane trail through the Granite Dells would be widened into a highway, Grace Sparkes was not alone in harboring apprehension. She feared “that the rude, rough and uncouth men with the TNT would ruin a lot of marvelous rocks and leave the road running through a scene of devastation,” the Weekly Journal-Miner revealed. The road would be built through what was then known as the Granite Dells Narrows, and now it would become the second approach to Prescott from the north and the beginning of a “short-line” road to Jerome: US Highway 79.
