By Ruth Noggle
(This is the second part of a two-part article regarding Joe Noggle, his family and the bronze foundry that he created.)
One of Joe's favorite picnic areas was on the top of Mingus Mountain. Our family always looked forward to those occasions. He took us with friends and relatives and we enjoyed happy summer repasts. Sometimes, he drove slowly around Jerome's curves retelling the true story of their sliding jail, the consequences of exploding dynamite. It was a ghost town then and Joe liked its mystique.
Other favorite picnic places were Wolf Creek off Senator Highway and Granite Basin Lake. Joe knew the history and some legends of these areas and we kids enjoyed his company. At home, Joe cooked pancakes and steaks on the outdoor fireplace's big griddle. We also had marshmallow and wiener roasts there.
Our family attended the First Congregational Church on the corner of Gurley and Alarcon. Joe sang in the choir with a deep baritone voice. The Rev. Dr. Charles Franklin Parker missed him when he couldn't come. Danny Freeman remembered him teaching a Sunday school class, using the kid's wooden blocks to explain the building blocks of life.
The church had an unused room off the sanctuary full of old boards, wooden benches and tables. Joe helped form the Men's Club and cleaned it out and laid a new floor. They hammered, nailed, sanded and sweated, laying narrow wood strips diagonally across the entire floor. It changed the room into a social showplace for the Women's Club potluck dinner and Sunday fellowships.
The house on Whetstine grew smaller with growing kids. Joe remodeled it, building an additional lower room on the east side, the length of the house. A metal-hooded fireplace gave it distinction.
Joe served in Smoki for several years, working in the underground below the Rodeo Arena. When they needed a puff of smoke to hide or make a dancer appear, he knew how to use a black powder charge at the right time. He and his sons drove out into the Prescott 'wilds' and caught numbers of bull snakes for the Snake Dance. Our friend, Leroy Russell, who rescued injured animals, also helped.
1958 was the centenary of Theodore Roosevelt's birth and the Arizona Game Protective Association (AGPA) planned a bronze plaque to commemorate his establishment of the Grand Canyon National Game Preserve within the present boundary of North Kaibab National Forest. William H. (Bill) Beers was AGPA president and they decided to place the plaque at Jacob Lake, a small town within Kaibab North. Bill owned and operated Beer's Roofing and Insulation in Prescott.
Roosevelt was revered in Prescott and the United States not only for his leadership with the Arizona Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War in 1898 and for being a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, but also for his aggressive conservation policies. During his two terms (1901-9), he set aside 120,000,000 acres of prime land that included the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve and the Game Preserve.
The AGPA contracted with George Phippen, a well-known western artist, to sculpt Roosevelt's face in bas-relief. George was also a member of the Frontier Rotary Club. Joe Vest, a Prescott tool and die maker, supervised the casting. Joe Noggle designed the memorial plaque at his drafting table.
Time was short for the June 22 event and when no furnace large enough to melt 60 pounds of bronze was located, Joe decided to set-up a foundry in the flat, shady area of our backyard. He obtained a big crucible for the metal alloy of copper and tin with small amounts of zinc and lead. This produced art bronze.
Scrounging around town, Joe found the tin in a store basement in cooling coils from an old soda fountain. The plaque was sand cast in a white pine casting flask using very fine sand from the banks of the Verde River.
A granite boulder found near the base of Thumb Butte and weighing 9,500 pounds was trucked up to Jacob Lake. It rolled off the truck, landing on the right end and the plaque was bolted on. The artists, their families, government dignitaries and Sen. Barry Goldwater, the dedicatee, attended the ceremony and admired the first bronze casting made in Prescott.
Joe's spirits soared and he decided bronze casting could help him and Prescott. He located an old livery stable with hitching rings in the walls on the corner of South Summit and Beach streets (now referred to as the Noggle building on the grounds of the Sharlot Hall Museum). The interior was a shambles, but with persistent work, the stable became the Noggle Bronze Works. It consisted of a foundry with an office, a mold and wax room upstairs, an oven and crucible furnace below, and a large finishing room on the driveway.
Along with Joe, his sons learned the exacting, painstakingly long, many-stepped process of the lost wax casting method that, depending on size, took a month or more to complete. I watched George Phippen at the touch-up bench as he used dental picks to dig out tiny details in his waxes and saw his originals travel through all the steps from beginning to end. Joe cast three of George's pieces: Parade Marshall, Father Kino and Brush Poppers, among others.
Famous artists and interested people came to the shop to watch or learn the art of bronze casting or have their art cast. Among them were Jack Armstrong, Sandi Ashton, Joe Beeler, Hugh Cabot, Ted DeGrazia, Cleo Duggar, R. Farrington Elwell, Tom Emery, Walt Emory, Eugenia Everett, Bruce Fee, Hardy Grant, Lee Jones, John La Parade, Robert Mikulewicz, Jack Osmer, Loren Phippen, Frank Polk, Jack Price, Hank Richter, Cynthia Rigden, John Skurja, Dick Sloviaczek, Mrs. Tognoni, Russ Vickers, John Waddell, Nan Whitte and George Zabriskie.
Famous authors who visited the shop included LaVerne Harrell Clark, Gene Hoopes and Beth Landis.
With Joe's artistic knowledge of each sculptor's wishes for their art castings, both his and Prescott's fame spread around the world in the 17 years between 1958 and 1975. He taught classes at the shop, "From Most Any Solid Medium to Bronze."
In the early 1970's, Joe sculpted iris fountains and an Arizona roadrunner perched with its tail up, standing among cacti. He cast these himself.
Noggle Bronze Works ended in late 1975 when Joe married Beth Landis and moved to Sedona. Joe's life and bronze foundry left their own famous legacies, not in dollars, but in rich stories, pictures, memories and hundreds of bronze castings, for his family and the people who knew him. He brought fame in bronze to Prescott and changed its history forever.
(Ruth Noggle is Joe Noggle's daughter. She has recently donated many items to the Museum to better document the life of her father including a much longer version of this story.)
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (Noggle collection). Reuse only by permission.
George Phippen (at the wax touch-up bench and near the wax melting stove), Carl Noggle and Joe Noggle work at the Noggle Bronze Works on Beach street. The foundry helped the community and was used by many famous artists and was noted for smelling of wax and synthetic rubber. Noggle Collection, Sharlot Hall Museum