By Karla Burkitt 

An artist, historian or living history interpreter whose job is to bring historical activities or people to life for an audience, faces a tremendous challenge. Sharing details of another time period or another person's experience with sensitivity and accuracy is a delicate balancing act.

by Robert L. Spude 

Among the collections at Sharlot Hall Museum is a finely hand-made wooden box. Inside, slid between wooden tracks, stand the glass plate negatives of Clarence H. Shaw, photographer of Arizona Territory during the 1890s and early 1900s. 

By Pat Atchison 

Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was then called, was first widely observed in the United States on May 30, 1868. The original intent was to honor the Union soldiers killed during the Civil War by decorating their gravesites.

By Rhonda L. Tintle

During the latter nineteenth century, immigrants from the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the United States, along with immigrants from around the world, invaded the homeland of Indians and took possession of over 430 million acres of land. Some of those immigrants settled in Prescott and the surrounding districts. The children of those immigrants would become the first American-style Arizonians. On the ranges in and around Prescott, harried parents struggled in cabins, shacks, and tents simply to sustain their families.

By Al Bates 

On May 10, 1863, at a location just a few miles south of today's Prescott, an event happened that had a significant impact on the future development of both this area and of Arizona Territory. On that date, twenty-five men signed a contract that established the first mining district in the Central Arizona Highlands. 

By Dewey E. Born 

In 1935 and 1936, Prescott had a population of about 5,000 and, like the rest of the country, was in the middle of the great depression. The surprising thing is that this small town had some 25 grocery stores. They varied from the national chain stores to small family stores, but they all seemed to make a profit.

By Parker Anderson 

Those familiar with the history of comedy in entertainment have heard legions of stories about the vaudeville circuit, which began in approximately the late 19th century and started to fade in the 1920s as motion pictures became more sophisticated. 

By Carol Powell 

Sometime in the late 1860s, Clara S. Olmstead Howard, a widow with children, met Louis Miller, an immigrant from Germany. They met and were married in Texas, where seven more children were born, including the sons who were destined to go on the become Arizona railroad men; two of them lost their lives on the trains.

By Mona Lange McCroskey 

In January, Prescott lost one of its grand dames with the passing of ninety-year-old Alice Mackin. She was the eighth child of Irish immigrant Peter Mackin and Alvina Bennett, who herself was born in what is now "the smack dab middle" of Goldwater Lake. Peter went riding by Alvina's home, saw her shoeing a horse and took a fancy to her because she was able to do such things; they married in 1902. Alice was born in 1916 and lived at Groom Creek in a house that was also a bar and stage stop (the house is still in the family).

By Tom Collins 

For decades, the Sharlot Hall Museum has possessed in its archives a fine photo entitled "Interior of an unidentified opera house, c. 1890s." And, since the Museum lacks photos of the interiors of the Prescott Theatre on the corner of Alarcon and Liberty streets (1878-1883); the so-called Prescott (or Bashford's) Opera House in the Howey building on the southeast corner of Cortez and Goodwin (1884-99); nor Patton's Opera House on the south side of West Gurley Street (1894-1897) (or known later as Dake's Opera House from 1897-1903); this, until-now unidentifiable photo, is a rare historical artifact of some significance and curiosity.