By Mick Woodcock

When Congress passed the Selective Service Act of 1917, it was in response to an enlistment of 73,000 men when the need was for ten times that amount. The low enlistment rate might have provided a clue as to the popularity of President Wilson’s war, but once the law was enacted, many men enlisted in the branch of their choice rather than waiting to be called up.

By Brad Courtney

“Prescott has five churches and two school buildings, 18 saloons, two breweries, a City Marshal, is the Capital of the Territory, county seat of Yavapai, and is soon to be lighted with gas,” read the Miner on March 10, 1882. The “City Marshal” listed here as one of Prescott’s sources of pride was James Dodson.

By David Higgs

The story has been retold many times.  It has been depicted in books and motion pictures to reveal the events that led to the end of the Apache Wars. They tell of the surrender of Geronimo’s band of Chiricahua Apaches to General Nelson A. Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, September 4, 1886, and the deportation of all Apaches associated with Geronimo to imprisonment in Florida, Alabama, and eventually Oklahoma.  However, the story does not end there.  For these Apache Prisoners of War, it meant a new life of constant change and acculturation as many of these people lived well into the twentieth century.  The world they knew ceased to exist.  As parents, Apache families tried to pass along wisdom and life-skills to their children, only to be contradicted by modern education.  Concepts of legal structure, religion, even the measurement of time proved to be obstacles for the next generation of Apaches.  Their children developed into people alien to the original life-ways of Apache culture.

By Janolyn Lo Vecchio

In 1912 Arizona women won the right to vote; two years later they elected Francis Willard Munds and Rachel Berry to the state legislature.  Yet while women began voting and serving as state legislators, they were barred from serving on juries until 1945.  In 1914 Maricopa County attorney Frank Lyman refused to seat nine women as jurors in Mesa because the state constitution specified only men could serve on juries.  From 1921-1933, women’s jury service bills were introduced and died in legislative committee hearings.

By Heidi M. Thomas

“…Rearing, bucking, fighting, a frenzied bronco tears at the burden on its back. Claimed by a thousand devils, he kicks and plunges with the fury of the damned. The rider, a woman, is buffeted and tossed like dust in a storm…”

By Ed Kabotie

Fred Kabotie is among the first artists of the modern Native American Arts & Crafts movement.  Born on Second Mesa, Arizona, in 1900 to the Hopi Bluebird Clan, Kabotie was originally named “Nakavoma” (Day After Day) by his paternal aunts of the Sun Clan.  His traditional upbringing was disrupted in 1906 by the arrest of his father, Lolomayaoma, and other Hopi leaders who refused to send their children to school.  At the age of 15, Nakavoma was sent to the Santa Fe Indian School where his name was “officially” changed to Fred Kabotie.

By Nancy Hans

This year marks 140 years of preservation for the historic Victorian house on the campus of the Sharlot Hall Museum at the corner of Gurley and McCormick Streets.

By Brad Courtney

Like the modern day “Big One,” when the San Andreas Fault makes that promised big slip and wreaks its destruction, a big fire of frightening dimension wasn’t a question of “If?” but “When?” for early Prescottonians.

By Mick Woodcock

Although Congress approved a gradual expansion of the United States Army and National Guard in 1916, the numbers were very low when war was declared. The Army was at 121,000 men and the National Guard 181,000. This was much less than the target of one million. When voluntary enlistments produced only 73,000 additional servicemen, Congress passed the Selective Service Act of 1917.
 

By Elisabeth F. Ruffner

In the early 1970s, Florence B. “Pat” Yount, MD, a busy pediatrician, found her interest in Prescott history sufficiently strong to attract others to her causes, including Mayor Taylor T. Hicks, Sr., a practicing dentist, whose avocational interest in history matched Dr. Yount’s.  A number of other Prescott professionals and businessmen and women soon began studying the possibilities of historic preservation initiated when Congress provided for a National Register of Historic Places within the Department of the Interior in 1966.