By Ruth Noggle

In 1948, my family came to Prescott from Michigan via Tucson. Harriette (Mom) and Joe Noggle (Dad and driver of our black 1949 Ford sedan), Carl and Roy (my older brothers) and I (Ruth, two years old at the time) drove up the Yarnell Hill on the two-lane, curvy Highway 89. When we had stopped in Congress for fuel before going up the hill, the station attendant gave Dad two flares to use in case we couldn’t make it up the hill! The radiator did overheat, but we slowly chugged into and through Yarnell. We drove on past Wilhoit’s lone gas station and on up to White Spar Road toward Prescott. Dad assured us the curves would end, but we had serious doubts.

Soon, tall pines greeted us along the way and the curves were gone when we were approaching Montezuma Street. A large square sign welcomed us: "Prescott – Home of the World’s Oldest Rodeo and 4,000 Inhabitants."

My dad built the first log house on Whetstine Avenue (just up Willow Creek Road from YRMC). We lived at #849 and subsequently built four other houses on that block. There were open fields around our house on the north, west and east. Whetstine Avenue ended in a dirt berm in the middle of the 700 block to the east. My brothers and I would find glowworms in the summer evenings where Prescott High School is now located. Our house had a picture window looking south toward Prescott which lay below us in the very bottom of the valley. Our view extended across town toward the blue Bradshaw Mountains. In winter, the blue-hued mountains changed to pristine white with snow visible all the way from town to the top of Mt. Union.

My first friends in 1951 were the Haymore kids. Their family owned and operated a dairy farm where the Safeway shopping center is now located on Willow Creek Road. They watered their stock from a 50-foot diameter pond close to the road. They had cows, horses, chickens and goats. Two of the younger kids rode their large, white draft horse up through our yard to the front porch and asked if I’d go for a bareback ride. I declined, afraid I’d fall off. They rode that horse downtown from their farm to ride in a 4th of July Parade and afterwards, they rode it all the way home.

In 1952, our mailboxes were across Willow Creek Road. Inside our box one winter day was a small cardboard container with holes in the sides. On top was a picture of a hatchling red-eared slider turtle. My Uncle Ralph in Denver ordered it from New York City for me and it was mailed across the country while the tiny turtle was in hibernation. I was only six years old, but learned from the directions how to care for her during hibernation. "Blinky" lived for six years in a small, oval, flat-bottomed plastic container with a ramp and plastic palm tree in the middle. She developed a taste for live flies and wouldn’t eat store-bought "dried flies." With a little help from my mom, I caught all of her food: grasshoppers, flies and crickets. Every day, I went all through the house and basement swatting flies. The neighbors always welcomed me carrying the fly-swatter.

I rode with my family in the ’49 Ford Woody Wagon over Mingus Mountain and through Jerome and Clarkdale many times. The old smelter at Clarkdale produced copper and gold with black smoke billowing from its tall smokestack. We stopped a couple of times at the old, columned swimming pavilion in downtown Clarkdale to swim or wade in the clear water.

On we went through Cottonwood, over the Verde River Bridge, across the flats and to Sedona. The only structure at that time below Coffee Pot Rock was the movie set where "Broken Arrow" with Jimmy Stewart and many other old westerns were filmed. Any roads leading off the main highway were two-track dirt.

In small-town Sedona, high on the west bank of Oak Creek, we’d stop at a shop for postcards, then go to the gas station at the corner of 89A and 179 to put more water in the radiator. Dad always refilled our canvas water bag. We kids fondly remember the distinctive thirst-quenching taste of the water from that bag. If we had time, Dad would drive east on 179, the unpaved highway of red sand and gravel, to stop at Kel Fox’s Fox Burro Cattle Ranch west of Bell Rock. There were no homes between Sedona and the ranch. Inside Kel’s ranch house, he’d always greet me with, "How’s the little sphinx?" He was very nice, but liked to tease me because I was shy. He and his wife, Patty, had two small boys. The oldest boy, Jeff, liked to take Roy and me out to the corral and talk about what he did on the ranch.

Later, Kel would ask me, "How’s the turtle?" "Fine," I would respond. He would then say, with a big smile, "Have you taught him how to bring in the newspaper yet?" "No, he’s a she." "Pardon me!" he’d always say. It sounded so strange to me.

He and Dad loved to talk and joke and laugh, while mom talked about food and kids with Kel’s wife. Then, we drove back to Prescott in the evening over Mingus Mountain, arriving at home with three kids sound asleep.

One year, a small circus set up tents on the northwest corner of Whipple and Ruth streets (near where the YMCA is now located). The gigantic elephants scared me, but I remember feeding them peanuts with my brothers’ help.

The open field to the northwest of our house and across Willow Creek Road was bisected by a little creek. My brothers and I jumped over it and climbed up into the ‘Rock Pile’ (the rocks behind what is now the location of the Walmart at Ponderosa Plaza). I made it to the top with them twice. Then we went down the back side to the Lugers’s farm on Meadowridge Road. Jim and Henrietta Lugers had two kids, Dave and Judy. They had rabbits, pigs, a horse, cats, cows and chickens and they delivered milk and eggs to customers in Prescott. Occasionally, we would find a large glass, narrow-necked bottle they’d left on our front porch. The white milk showed a distinct thick layer of cream on top. What a treat it was!

Next week in Part 2, Ruth tells us more of how it was in 1950s Prescott.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(courtesy Ruth Noggle) Reuse only by permission.
The Noggle children at play on Whetstine Avenue, 1951: Carl is shading his eyes; Roy is above with Ruth in front.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(st125pa) Reuse only by permission.
In the 1920s, the first welcome to Prescott arch was built of stone at the edge of the bridge over Granite Creek on White Spar Road (near the present Safeway store). Later, when Ruth arrived in Prescott in 1948, there was a large square welcome sign that read, "Prescott – Home of the World’s Oldest Rodeo and 4,000 Inhabitants."