By Parker Anderson

The mountain town of Jerome, today a quiet, tourist-oriented hamlet, was a wild and wooly mining camp in the late 19th century thru the 1920s. A vast array of respectable and not so respectable characters congregated there. Among them a barber named Richard Cross.

Very little is known of his background, except that he hailed from Illinois. Why he ended up in Jerome is also unknown. What is known is that, while he was there, he became infatuated and/or obsessed with a woman who did not return his love.

By Bill Lynam

Pick a clear day, bring your walking stick and gloves, a Global Positioning System (GPS) instrument, if you've got one, but it's not necessary, and head up the trail at Stricklin Park from the Butte Creek trail head. The start of the trail is on Sherwood Road, just one street west on Gurley Street past The Hassayampa Village turn off. The Cowboy's Prayer awaits you at the top of the trail.

By Lorri Carlson

When considering the history of the Chinese in Prescott, I repeatedly ask "why?" Why would so many individuals leave their families, homes and the homeland of their ancestors? Why would they leave so much behind? Why would they take such risks and face such uncertainty? Indeed, the hope of finding gold in the Western United States during the second half of the 19th century lured Easterners and Europeans in addition to the Asian population. It is my intent to understand what circumstances pushed the emigrants to leave China.

By Mick Woodcock

On the last day of the year 1906, Frank G. Ellis, M. D. of Annapolis, Missouri, was the subject of a letter that would forever change his life. It was a form letter, much as any U. S. government form letter sent from the Office of Indian Affairs. The printing in the body of the letter was in an attractive script. The substance of the message was typed in the blank spaces at the ends of sentences. It would send the good doctor on a rail and wagon trip to one of the more remote areas of the Arizona Territory: the Colorado River Agency.

By Danny Freeman

The word rodeo in Spanish means to surround or round up. In reality there have been "rodeos" or round ups in America since the Spanish people brought cattle and horses to the New World in the 1500's. Today, however, "rodeo" to Americans means organized events of cowboy contests. In most parts of the United States and Canada rodeo is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable but in Mexico, and sometimes in California, the accent can be found on the second syllable.

By Lester "Budge" Ruffner

He died on Christmas Day, 1934, when the country was in the icy grip of both the depression and the Democrats. Governor of Arizona for seven terms during his career, this remarkable achievement earned him the sobriquet "George VII."

George Wylie Paul Hunt would have been a difficult client for the political image-makers of today. In all fairness, he could not be called either physically or intellectually attractive. Pumpkin-shaped and barely literate, his standard dress was a white linen suit, wool cap and high, black, laced shoes, winter and summer.

By Mona Lange McCroskey

Lillie Murphy Cook was born in a house on the corner of McCormick and Gurley Streets, where the Bashford House now stands, on April 24, 1897. At the time of her interview, in 1994, she was living just up the hill at the Arizona Pioneers' Home. Her little brothers, Lee and Lloyd Murphy, then also in their nineties, were there at the same time. In the intervening ninety-seven years, Lillie had grown up and lived in Prescott (she always said "Pres-cott") and remembered life as it was in the early twentieth century.

By Charles P. Stanton and edited by Parker Anderson

(Last week, in part one, we found Stanton and Rodrigues having a discussion in the Prescott jail about the murder of Timmerman and the possibility of a conspiracy against Stanton by Law Enforcement officials.)

The following is reprinted from the Arizona Miner of June 18, 1879. The author, Charles P. Stanton, recently arrested and later freed from a theft charge, alleges a vast conspiracy among top Yavapai County officials to frame him for murder and/or have him killed.

By Charles P. Stanton and edited by Parker Anderson

(The following is reprinted from the Arizona Miner of June 18, 1879. The author, Charles P. Stanton, recently arrested and later freed from a theft charge, alleges a vast conspiracy among top Yavapai county officials to frame him for murder and/or have him killed.)

"Ed. Miner: - I beg that you will be pleased to give me space in your columns to expose a black and most infamous conspiracy concocted, plotted, and carried out with the most consummate skill and precision, by a powerful combination of unscrupulous parties, who hesitated not at all the perpetration of every enormity to fully. . .

By Jean Cross

Probably the most historic area in Prescott is along Granite Creek. It was this source of water which determined the location of Arizona's territorial capital in 1864. Prior to that, miners found the creek to be a source of their quest for gold. Later Robert Groom surveyed the town and established the town square on the east bank of the creek while the Governor's mansion occupied the west bank. Whiskey Row with its restaurants and saloons grew up along side of the plaza providing refreshment and entertainment to miners, cowboys and residents of the growing town. Other types of entertainment and services were provided by the people who lived 'behind the Row'.