By Ken Edwards

This is one of two articles.  Part two is titled, "Squatting on the Plaza: 1867 Style - Part 2," published December, 27, 2008 and is in the SHM Days Past Archives.

A squatter is an individual who settles on property belonging to someone else or to the government. After a certain period of occupancy he may claim the property as his own. In so doing, he is claiming squatters' rights or the right of adverse possession. This two-part article is the story of H.W. Ward, who attempted in 1867 to claim half of the Prescott Plaza as his own by using squatters' rights.

By Edna (Ballew) Patton and Parker Anderson

Edna Mae (Ballew) Patton lived in Skull Valley for over sixty years. In the late 1990s, she committed many of her memories to paper. Following are her writings. Edna died on July 31, 2008, only five days after meeting with Sharlot Hall Museum volunteer, Parker Anderson, and giving permission for her memoirs to be published.

My husband Warren and I arrived in Prescott with a very sick son on March 31, 1940. That summer, Warren asked me to fix a picnic lunch. He said he had something he wanted to show me. We picnicked in the woods and then drove out on the narrow ledge road above Copper Basin.

By Jeb Stuart Rosebrook, Ph.D 

The following article was adapted from an article initially published by the Society for American Baseball Research in "Mining Towns to Major Leagues: A History of Arizona Baseball." It is re-printed by the author's permission.

In January 1873, a Prescott paper, the Arizona Miner, reported one of the first games played in the Arizona Territory, a Christmas day match at Camp Grant in southeastern Arizona. "In the afternoon, an exciting game of base ball took place. This occupied the attention, [of] both of the combatants, until one o'clock, when the welcome call to dinner was wafted to our ears, and readily responded to." No score or outcome of the game was reported. With the first professional league organized in the East in 1871, and baseball being played in the far corners of the Western Territories, the game of baseball was on its way to becoming ingrained in America's consciousness - and Arizona's - as the national pastime.

By Parker Anderson

It was June 6, 1898. The dust had not yet settled from the hanging three days earlier of legendary Yavapai County outlaw James Parker, when the still of everyday Prescott life was shattered by the sound of gunfire on North Cortez Street. Soon, Dr. John Bryan McNally, one of Prescott's most prominent physicians, and remembered yet today as a great Prescott pioneer, staggered out into the street with a gunshot wound. It was nothing short of a miracle that McNally was alive, as reported by the Arizona Journal-Miner: "The bullet struck a watch in Dr. McNally's pocket, glancing off and then passed through the fleshy part of the left arm between the elbow and wrist."

By T. Stone 

In Part I, we learned that the 1918 Spanish flu arrived in Prescott on October 2, 1918 and the spread of infection rose and fell like a scythe cutting ripe wheat.

By T. Stone 

Ninety years ago, the world, in the final throes of the Great War (known today as World War I), was confronted with an influenza pandemic that ended up killing more than 50,000,000 people worldwide; a number at least twice the number of those soldiers who died in battle during the war. Some called it the "plague" but most called this contagion the Spanish flu because it was first reported as a pandemic in Spain.

By Pauline O'Neill and edited by Parker Anderson

The following composition by Pauline O'Neill, the widow of Prescott's famed William Own "Buckey" O'Neill, first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner in 1898, shortly after Buckey's death in the Spanish American War as one of Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders. The exact date it appeared is not currently known, although the data undoubtedly exists somewhere.

By Linda Ludington

The country is not a gentle land. Huge boulders strewn about like a naughty child's toys appear to have catapulted one another to balance themselves capriciously on sheer ledges. Rocks trap and concentrate precious moisture in clefts to nourish Saguaro and desert grasses. Above the Santa Maria River, steep ridges reveal still higher crests to the north. The elevation climbs from 2,000 to over 5,000 feet. The desert gives way to vast mesas covered with pinon, oak, and mountain grasses.

By Linda Ludington

In Part I, we learned that Ed Kellis dreamed of owning a cattle ranch, and that as a toddler, he received his first heifer calf. During the Depression, the Kellis family sold their Blackwell, Texas, windmill business and blacksmith shop and moved to Bagdad, Arizona. Having purchased a herd of goats and cattle, the family met with financial disaster due to a severe winter, during which most of the livestock perished, unfortunately. Hence, Ed Kellis started work at the mine in Bagdad.

By Ed T. Nesdill

Last week, Part I dealt with the 1884 homestead claim of Frederich Barth, (today known as Ponderosa Park) and some of the many owners of the divided property down through the years. Part II, presented here, tells the geology and some of the mining history of the area.