By John Sterr of the Jerome Historical Society
The town we now know as Jerome began in 1876 when Angus McKinnon and Marion A. Ruffner officially recorded their mining claims in the area. As mining increased over the next two decades, a camp sprang up to house, feed and serve the growing population of mines. Mr. Eugene Murray Jerome and Mrs. Paulina Von Scheidau Jerome of New York City secured capital investment in the copper camp. It was named Jerome in 1882.
Four fires from 1894 to 1899 repeatedly destroyed much of the town's business district. The camp was incorporated into a town in 1899 to provide needed fire safe building codes, assured emergency water supplies and properly equipped firemen. Around this time, ordinances passed by the new government dealt with building codes. Noted buildings such as the T.F. Miller Company, built in 1899, and the Connor Hotel rebuilt, in 1899, constructed with brick and stone made the new business district more resilient.
The petitioners for incorporation in 1899 advertised their intentions in the Jerome Mining News and Jerome Reporter ahead of the vote by the county seat of Yavapai County at Prescott. Not everyone in Jerome wanted to incorporate. Real estate prospector and businessman G.W. Hull (who would later have a street in Jerome named after him) protested against it at the meeting. Whatever his arguments were, the measure passed unanimously. It was noted that two-thirds “of the taxable inhabitants of the said town of Jerome are desirous that the same be incorporated under the name of the Town of Jerome.”
Jerome’s population at the time was 2500, more than five times the residents it has today. The Yavapai County Government, at the same meeting at which Jerome incorporated, appointed five Common Council members to govern the town until the first elections were held. Jerome became, at one point, the fourth largest city in the Arizona Territory.
The town grew over the next three decades, shaking its beginnings as a ramshackle mining town to become a “civilized” town in its heyday at the end of the 1920s. Its population peaked at 15,000 people. Mining continued through the 1940s, ceasing in 1953, bringing to a close the first half of Jerome’s history. In that same year the Jerome Historical Society formed to help promote and attract tourism. As the town lost population over the next decade, artists and hippies began moving to Jerome in the 1960s, further revitalizing the town and attracting more people, making the town what it is today.
Since its founding, Jerome has lived through two main eras of roughly equal duration — mining and arts tourism. Through these two periods, it developed its own unique character which leaves its mark on people and buildings alike. The Douglas Mansion, for example, was built by James Stuart Douglas (Rawhide Jimmy) from wealth earned from the Little Daisy mine. Now it survives as a museum of Jerome and the Douglas family, and a scenic viewing area for tourists. In her 2008 book on Jerome, Midge Steuber summed up Jerome’s unique character as “a fiercely independent community that is outspoken, marches to a different drummer, and holds a can-do, never-say-die attitude.”
On March 8th, the Town of Jerome turns 125. To commemorate this milestone, the town will celebrate on Saturday, March 9, in classic Jerome style, including a parade at 11 a.m., music by Llory McDonald and Combo Deluxe from 12:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the Spirit Room and the transformation of the Bartlett Hotel ruins on Main Street into a shrine honoring Jerome’s past, with a slideshow starting at dusk featuring images from Jerome’s eras. Please join us!
“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.archives.sharlothallmuseum.org/articles/days-past-articles/1 The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles and inquiries to dayspast@sharlothallmuseum.org Please contact SHM Research Center reference desk at 928-277-2003, or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information or assistance with photo requests.