By Goodwin "Goodie" Berquist
(This is the second part of a two-part article that began last Sunday)
Publicizing Prescott and Yavapai County took much of Grace Sparkes' time. In 1931 alone, 20,000 city booklets were disseminated. Fifteen thousand county maps were printed in 1932 and 30,000 folders published in 1933. As Grace herself put it in a report she prepared for the supervisors in 1937, "much of our time is spent in giving reliable and authentic information to the tourist and prospective investor. This data pertains to all roads and highways in Yavapai County, scenic points of interest, resorts, guest ranches, as well as, the mining, stock raising and farming resources of Yavapai County in its entirety.
The county was the size of the State of New Jersey.] We have always considered our scenic attractions and climatic advantages as genuine assets." Material was sent to every state in the union, plus several foreign countries. Within Arizona itself, every chamber of commerce and travel bureau was sure to receive information about Prescott and Yavapai County.
According to tribal officials, Grace "masterminded" the establishment of the Yavapai-Prescott Indian Reservation. She also encouraged the local Yavapai to return to the craftwork for which they were earlier famous. She played a key role in the construction of the Ernest Love Airport, having earlier taken a flight herself. She championed the development of Arizona's Sunkist Trail (now more or less Interstate 10 from Los Angeles to Phoenix) and the Blythe Bridge into California. A modern highway link to Jerome was also among the improvements she advocated.
The chamber also helped establish U.S. Government Hospital No. 50 on the grounds of Fort Whipple, a facility which pumped "millions of dollars" into the Prescott economy each year.
Grace "maintained an active mining department," supplying technical information, helping secure venture capital, and in some cases, "grub staking a group of miners on Lynx Creek." After she resigned her post in 1938, Grace went on to manage her father's "Texas Mine" near Bisbee.
The lure of the west as a destination for touring motorists from the east coincided with Grace's campaign to establish better roads to and from Prescott. At one stage, she even recommended a highway stretching north from the Mexican border through Prescott all the way to Canada. While this dream was never realized, no one in Prescott could accuse the chamber secretary of a lack of vision.
Nineteen twenty-four was the year two Yavapai County ranchers decided to open their spreads as guest ranches to cater, as Grace put it, "to dudes and dudines." She lauded this innovation as she did every effort to attract visitors to the area.
It was Grace Sparkes who assisted Sharlot M. Hall in securing state funds to restore the territorial governor's mansion. And it was she who played a key role in helping the town build its armory (recently named for her). She lobbied the government for improvements to the park at Montezuma's Castle and the preservation of the Tuzigoot Native American ruins. She also coordinated the Arizona exhibit at the Chicago World's fair. For all these reasons, in 1985, Grace Sparkes was admitted to the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame.
Dedicated to her job and tireless in pursuit of her work, Grace Sparkes was an agent for change in a community that accepted change slowly.
Clearly Grace Sparkes' achievements were many. Why then did she resign her post in 1938 at age forty-five?
To answer this question, we need to examine the view of another Prescottonian, real estate developer, Bill Aven. A veteran who had been gassed in World War One, Aven was admitted to the Veteran's Hospital at Fort Whipple in 1920. It took him six years to recover his health sufficiently to enter business. Unable to breathe properly in Phoenix, Tucson or Banning, California, he chose to settle down here.
As he soon learned, in order to be considered a citizen of Prescott, "one had either to be born here or have come in the early years..." Aven fit neither category. An outsider, he found himself unsuccessful in his efforts to establish communication with the old guard that ruled the local Chamber of Commerce. So, he organized a Junior Chamber. Due to temporary ill health, he was forced to curb his participation in this new group and the Jaycees expired three years later.
A few years later, a group of civic-mined young businessmen decided to try again. They wanted to establish a new organization to improve the business climate in Prescott and not surprisingly, they asked Bill's advice. Aven suggested they work within the existing chamber instead and urged them to run for office at the next election. Fifteen newcomers agreed to do so, and were surprised to find themselves elected! They thus became the ruling majority in the twenty-five member chamber.
According to Aven, Grace Sparkes ran the show as she had for the proceeding twenty-seven years. "The group elected directors and officers, but the Secretary served as a boss over all things. She made all decisions and as long as she did what they wanted done to keep the old establishment alive, it continued that way." Aven added that in a spirit of compromise, "one day I approached her with the hope that I might be able to convince her that it would be to the mutual advantage of both the old and the young if we could establish a dialogue between ourselves, and she could continue to serve as secretary, but she wanted no part of it -unless the young blood agreed to rescind the election." She tendered her resignation shortly thereafter.
At a well-attended public meeting, the question was put whether to continue the old county chamber or establish a new Prescott Chamber of Commerce. The latter option won, and so began a new chapter in the business history of the city.
As Aven concluded, "we had to have an open town to outsiders and to welcome them into the community as new members."
Prescott's problems did not end with the changes in the chamber. "For many years," Aven wrote, "during the 20's, 30's and early 40's, Prescott had men serving on the City Council who were most incompetent for the job they had to do, with few exceptions. At one time every man sitting on the Council and the Mayor were failures in their own businesses, but were elected to the Council to run an eight million dollar corporation, which was the City of Prescott at the time. You can image how city business was conducted by such men."
To correct this situation, five new candidates agreed to run, including Bill Aven. " Two councilmen and the mayor were from our group," Aven noted. "This was the beginning of younger men serving on the council and it has proved to be in the best interest of Prescott."
Coincidently, Prescott's population remained about the same from 1910 to 1950 with only 26% growth rate in forty years! Postwar migration has brought major changes to the community ever since.
(Goodwin Berquist is a volunteer at the Sharlot Hall Museum and has recently completed processing the Chamber of Commerce Collection. The collection is available for public research at the Museum's Archives)
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(po0639p). Reuse only by permission.
Grace Sparkes admires the singing of a cowboy at the Arizona booth of the Chicago Worlds Fair in the early 1930s. Admired herself for her hard work as Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, she resigned in the late 1930s and moved away.