By Kristen Kauffman

In 1930s Prescott, kids were told to stay away from the dangerous red light district. Postmaster Gail Gardner wouldn’t even name it. To him it was “the restricted zone.” In her oral history archived at the Sharlot Hall Museum, Mittie Cobey recounts a night when she was a teen driving around with a boy after dark. They were not supposed to be near Goodwin and Granite Streets. But on this night, as they neared the alley behind the Hotel St. Michael, Cobey saw a man clutching his belly. Fifty yards behind him, she saw a man holding a gun. She was sure the one man shot the other because the victim was “bothering his girls,” as Cobey said, “the cribs were right there.”

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