By Parker Anderson

It is well known that Northern Arizona, including Prescott, had a very large population of Chinese residents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, since then, that community has all but disappeared from this area. The local Chinese have become the stuff of legend, often talked about but little documented.

By Ann Hibner Koblitz 

On March 18, 2005, the Sharlot Hall Museum will be opening a fascinating exhibit showing the results of the archaeological dig undertaken during the construction of the new parking structure on Granite Street. Entitled "Outcasts," the exhibit focuses on two communities in Prescott in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Chinese immigrants and prostitutes. At the time, both groups were "outcasts," and, under most circumstances, upstanding citizens of Prescott did not consider them "respectable."

By Ryan Flahive

On Sunday, March 24 of the year 1918, a funeral was held at A.M.E. Zion Church. All of Prescott's civic orders were represented either by body or by individual members; the Welfare Committee of the Chamber of Commerce donated a six by three foot floral arrangement in the shape of an American flag; the church was filled to capacity with citizens offering their respects to friends and family. This funeral was for William King, the first Yavapai County soldier to die in service in the Great War, and one of only eleven African-Americans from Yavapai County drafted into service.

By Parker Anderson

The famed and admired Elks Opera House in Prescott marks its 100th anniversary today. Many long-term Prescottonians have fond memories of movies and events in the auditorium, and it has played an important role in local entertainment throughout its history. Those familiar with its history know that it has been rocky at times, but the Elks Theater has proven itself to be a survivor, and it is still with us when many other theater of its age around the country have long closed their doors and/or met with the wrecking ball.

By Terry Munderloh

(This article was originally posted on February 3, 2001.)

Gold and silver were not the only mineral deposits which Arizona pioneers discovered.

In 1879 George Puntenney and his wife Lucy arrived in Arizona, located an abundance of limestone on the south rim of Hell Canyon (Highway 89 crosses Hell Canyon about 40 miles north of Prescott) and built the territory's first lime kiln. Lime was an important commodity in the developing West.

By Don Larry

On Prescott's courthouse plaza stands the tall, ornately canopied bandstand. It was built in 1908 on the spot where an earlier bandstand had stood for many years. The nationwide brass band movement was first introduced into Arizona here in 1865 and it quickly spread throughout the territory.

By Al Bates Julius and Celia Sanders spent the first 35 years of their married life uneventfully, farming in Kentucky and Illinois. The next five years were spent on a trek that took them and most of their children to California and then to Arizona to become Prescott's first Anglo family.

By Leo Banks

On a snowy night in Prescott in January of 1898, a mysterious woman dropped a baby girl onto the bar of a Whiskey Row saloon and disappeared out the bat-wing doors.  The commotion that resulted rocked the town, and its echoes are still felt today.

By Ann Hibner Koblitz

If we judge by most of the accounts available in bookstores, women in early territorial Arizona had precisely two occupations-- ranch/farm wife and prostitute. Some further reflection might expand the list of women's jobs to include schoolmarm and possibly maid servant or laundress, but after that most of us would draw a blank. Probably we would excuse our inability to come up with a longer list with some facile remark about how restricted women's lives were in Victorian America, and how 19th-century Arizonan women could not be expected to have had the myriad ambitions and opportunities of their 21st Century descendants.

By Ken Edwards

Rancher, entrepreneur, truck driver, farmer, and builder. All of these terms apply to John Benton 'Jack' Jones, builder of Prescott's historic Hotel Vendome. Often confused with a miner of the same name, the "real" (for our purposes) Jack Jones was never involved in mining activity. Born in a small ranching community in central Texas in 1881, Jack left home at an early age because he couldn't get along with the rest of his family.