By Stan Brown

This is Part 3 of a three part article.  Part 1 was published on June 21, 2008 and Part 2 was published June 28, 2008 and all are in the SHM L&A Days Past Archives.

In Part 2 last week, we ended with the establishment of the Lone Star Baptist Church (now First Baptist Church) by the Rev. Romulus Windes, a Baptist Missionary who had arrived in Prescott in 1879. Soon after his arrival, he was teaching school in the Mosher cabin at the present day Las Fuentes location and was instrumental in having a new schoolhouse built the following year on Iron Springs Road. Part 3 concludes this series.

Soon after that first term in the new schoolhouse began, D. F. Mitchell took a stereoscopic photo of the school with thirty-five children and their teacher(s). There are also some parents standing on the porch and in front of the building. Someone has erroneously written the date of March 1878 on the back of the several copies of this photo in the Sharlot Hall Archive Library. D. F. Mitchell was the brother of Miss Angie Mitchell, the original teacher at the Sanders/Moser cabin, and because her photographer brother took the picture, someone may have assumed this was the school where Angie Mitchell taught (Sanders/Mosher cabin) and thus attached this earlier date. This same picture was used on the cover for the book 'Dust In Our Desks,' and since Miss Mitchell began Miller Valley classes in 1878, the editor of the book perpetuated the mistaken date. 

A careful comparison of the pictures of this new West Prescott School and the photo of the Sanders/Mosher cabin at the Las Fuentes site helps clarify that they are two distinct locations. Even though the shadows cast in the schoolhouse picture are correct for both the Las Fuentes hill and a location along Iron Springs Road, the configurations of the log cabin at the Las Fuentes site and that of the new West Prescott schoolhouse are very different. The Iron Springs location for the new schoolhouse would seem to be on the north side of the road, just below the rise where the Safeway store is today, on the location of the Whataburger fast food establishment. There is no doubt that this picture is, indeed, the new schoolhouse on Iron Springs Road, probably taken c1880. (The new schoolhouse was completed by December 1879.) 

By August of 1880, the Baptist congregation had grown large enough to build their own building in town on 'Academy Hill,' the location of today's Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Angie Mitchell wrote in her diary, August 27, 1880, "Baptist Church which is set upon the hill was dedicated this evening." The Arizona Miner waxed eloquent, "The new Baptist Church edifice looms up on a mesa in West Prescott. It is like 'a city set upon a hill' to be seen and accessible to all men." 

Meanwhile, the latest owner of the Tom Sanders ranch, Roland Mosher, became a major developer in Miller Valley. The portion of the Sanders' ranch that fell in the description of Section 28, Township 14N, Range 2W had been registered as squatter's rights and could be deeded to private owners only after the Federal survey had been conducted. Mosher had bought the squatter's rights from Tom Sanders and, by 1890, he was able to "prove up" on 160 acres to receive the deed. This enabled Mosher to proceed with subdividing the property, and a series of owners followed for the next forty years. Names come and go on the various portions of the old Sanders ranch, presumably some of them owning the Las Fuentes property: Marguerite Turner, H. A. Savage, E. M. Savage and George Allan. 

It was 1914 when George and Addie Allan came to Prescott from New Jersey for the health of their son George. They brought with them their flower shop business, complete with greenhouse, and purchased "the old Sanders ranch." The Allan family's greenhouse was first located at 350 Whipple Street and, in 1919, the subdivided lots north of Whipple were called Allandale. The area south of Whipple to Miller Creek was subdivided by its new owner, Henry Dameron, and was called the Dameron Subdivision. In 1929, the Allans moved their greenhouse complex into the Dameron subdivision closer to Miller Creek on "five acres of rich and fertile soil in Miller Valley. All five acres were cultivated with water pumped from a spring on Miller Creek." For more information about the Allans, see the Days Past article by Mona McCrosky on May 11, 1997, "Allan's Flower Shop, deeply rooted in Prescott," online at sharlothallmuseum.org. 

By the 1920s, a gentleman named Joseph Franklin Scott was buying up portions of the old Sanders ranch, financed by an uncle from California who acted as the silent partner. In the 1950s, Mr. Scott was building a house at the top of the rise on Scott Drive for his uncle, but when the uncle and his wife came from California to look at the property, she determined she would not live here. Instead of paying Joseph the money he had invested in the new house, his uncle deeded the forty-one acres over to him. As a devout Mormon, Joseph deeded that portion of the property where a field of sweet corn was growing to the Mormons for a church site. Joseph Scott died in November 1962, and his brother Wesley Scott took over the property. Wesley's son-in-law, Chuck Warner, proceeded to manage the development of the property, which to this point had remained vacant. The Scott brothers brought their horses and cattle onto the property to graze, stating that the "springs here are artesian wells." 

In 1964, Wesley Scott, his wife and his sister as owners of the property, dedicated a new subdivision called Hiawatha Meadows. In 1976, Wesley Scott gave his son-in-law, Chuck Warner, an option on the acreage, and Warner formed the Warner-MacMillan Construction Company. Mr. Warner had begun building houses along Scott Drive as well as planning condominiums on the land now occupied by the Samaritan Village. However, Warner soon found that, with the advent of the Prescott High School on Ruth Street, people were reluctant to live that close to the school. He gave up the idea of a residential neighborhood and had the property zoned for commercial use. On October 1, 1976, Wesley Scott sold the property to Chuck Warner, and on that same date, the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society purchased property from Warner on which to build the Samaritan Village. It opened for business in 1978. 

In the first half of the 1980s, several tracts were subdivided under the name Las Fuentes Subdivision. Warner named it after the artesian springs on the property; fuentes in Spanish meaning "springs or fountains." The Lutheran Church property was deeded to the American Evangelical Lutheran Church December 12, 1983, and additional lots were deeded in January 1985. 

On November 30, 1984, Mr. Warner formed a partnership called Las Fuentes Associates and in 1986, his company built the Las Fuentes Care Center. He said, "I bullied them into naming it Las Fuentes." He also sold property on Ruth Street to the Mormons for their seminary and to others for the medical and dental offices. 

In 1988, Chuck Warner retired and sold Las Fuentes Associates and the remaining tracts to Crown Builders and its owner Astor Stave (Stave Properties is the realtor phase of Crown Builders.) On May 1, 1996, sixteen plus acres were transferred to a limited liability company, for Las Fuentes Resort Village and Phase One was built in 1997, Phase Two built in 1998. Mr. Astor Stave continued to own controlling interest in the subsidiary companies. 

Today, one can stroll through the cottonwood grove on the campus of Las Fuentes Resort village, and be aware that some of Prescott's founding history took place here. The panorama of the past played out here: the Sanders and Miller brothers and sisters binding their families together in marriage, building cabins, stringing barded wire corrals among these trees, grazing their livestock on the surrounded grasses and drinking from the artesian springs. This is not just any old place, this is a special place where the trees could tell so many stories if we had the ears to hear. 

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(bus5007p)
Reuse only by permission.
The West Prescott School, c1880, was located on Iron Springs Road where the Whataburger stands today. 


Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(buc1051p)
Reuse only by permission.
The Lone Star Baptist Church; the first Baptist Church to be established in all of the Territory of Arizona. The small congregation first met in the Methodist Church, later in the Sanders/Mosher cabin, then the new schoolhouse in West Prescott and finally built this church building on 'Academy Hill' where the present day Catholic Church is located. The Lone Star Baptist Church is now First Baptist Church and is located on the corner of Marina and Goodwin Streets. 


Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pb011f8i8)
Reuse only by permission.
The George and Addie Allan home in Miller Valley, c1920. The Allans purchased "the old Sanders ranch" (current site of Las Fuentes campus) and later, the subdivided lots north of Whipple Street were called Allandale. George came to Prescott in 1914 with his wife and son, bringing with him his florist business, which he maintained for many years.