By William D. Kalt III
Prescott’s Knights of Pythias Hall whirred with action and anticipation in late June 1901. Local women kept three new sewing machines running each day and part of the night, helping to stitch a massive new cloth apparatus for parachute artist Miss Hazel Keyes. The daring aeronaut’s new balloon stood 80 feet in circumference, contained more than 800 yards of muslin and required “more than a few miles of sewing to complete.” Hazel, 40 years old, brought two enormous lizards to Prescott to parachute with her, but both disappeared. Instead, she planned to fasten Palace Saloon owner Bob Brow’s pet raccoon in a basket and release it attached to a small parachute. An Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner scribe declared, “The famous toyer of death” stood “highly spoken of as a lady and certainly one of the prettiest mid-air performers ever seen hanging to a balloon.” The Arizona Republic dubbed her “the most daring and plucky little woman seen by man or woman in a lifetime.”