By Terry Munderloh

The age of electricity began in the United States when the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York went into operation on September 4, 1882. In Arizona Territory, the little town of Prescott would not become electrified until Frank Lowell Wright came to town.

Frank Wright came to Arizona in the 1870s and worked the steam driven stamp mill at the Tip Top Mine. He later moved to Chaparral Gulch (south of Humboldt) where he managed several developing mines in that area using boiler and steam operated engines. When the mining boom in Yavapai County began to wane, Frank, with his expertise of boiler and steam engine operations, visualized a new market for Thomas Edison's technology. Purchasing generating equipment from some of the defunct mines, Frank moved to Prescott and formed the Prescott Electric Company. 

The Prescott Electric Company power plant began operations in January of 1894. The first customers were the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors who authorized the power company to wire the county courthouse and the town of Prescott who contracted for open arc streetlights in the downtown area. 

The next biggest paying customer of the Prescott Electric Company was the Arizona Journal Miner Newspaper who converted their printing presses to electric power. Local businesses jumped on the new power wagon. The Hotel Burke and the Hotel Windsor were proud to boast of having electric lights and fans in their lobbies and dining rooms. Many Prescott residents also replaced gas lighting in their homes with the new convenience of electricity and by 1896 the congregation of the Baptist Church were reading their choir books and sing more mightily with the benefit of electric lights in their church. 

Along with electrical service to the town came telephone service. Although the Sunset Telephone and Telegraph Company had completed a circuit to Prescott for out of town calls in 1899, Wright focused on local communication and signed up the majority of telephone subscribers in Prescott with the Prescott Electric Company. Theodore Otis, then postmaster of Prescott and grocery store owner, was one of the first to have a telephone installed in his place of business. Moses Hazeltine had a telephone installed in the Bank of Arizona and soon every business and resident who could afford one, had their own telephone. 

With 200 subscribers, the Prescott Electric Company employed five operators in the daytime and one at night. The operators got to know everyone by name and exchange number and when a call came to the switchboard saying Mrs. Brown wanted to talk to Mrs. Smith, the parties were immediately connected. 

The downtown arc lights were perched on the top of forty five foot poles with ten cross arms carrying the telephone and electrical wires, a lineman's nightmare if he had to strap on his boot hooks and scale the redwood poles to splice a line. The wires were so close together they were pulled tight to keep from slacking off and on a cold night they would sing like a dozen banjos oscillating through the downtown streets. 

These early linemen were masters of improvisation and if no insulator was on hand, they would break off the necks of discarded bottles and install them as temporary insulators. The inside lineman joke, when questioned by local customers as to what kind of an insulator was supporting their telephone line was, " Oh that! That's Old Crow." Whether the lines were supported by Old Crow, Dr. Pierce's Prescription for Women's Weakness or Dugan's Dew, the linemen enabled the message to get through. 

Pursuing new outlets for electric power, Frank established the Prescott and Mr. Union Railway Company. Envisioning a need for public transportation to replace horse and buggy, he successfully wooed the Town Council into granting him a franchise to operate an electrical rail system. His long-term plan was to begin the rail system in Prescott and then extend the line south to tap the rich mining district in the Mount Union area. The Santa Fe Railroad opposed his plan to expand the line to the mining districts threatening a fare war, so Frank decided to operate the streetcar system only in town. 

Track was laid from the west end of Gurley Street and its intersection with Garden Street, then along Gurley probably past Citizen Cemetery where it then went north across Sheldon Street, through what is now Yavapai College and spilled out above Fort Whipple. There was also a spur track running north on Cortez Street to the car barn just north of where Murphy's restaurant is today. An electrical umbilical cord connection to the electric car's wand was added to the power poles increasing the illusion of multiple strands of spaghetti stung on drying racks. 

The Arizona Journal Miner reported on November 15, 1905, that it was a notable event in the history of Prescott's progress and advancement when the first street car to Fort Whipple made its initial official run. Motorman El Stauffer left the Burke corner at 2 PM with a load of local dignitaries on board for the inaugural ride. The run to the end of the line took eight minutes, one stop made for a couple of ladies who boarded the car at Mt. Vernon street and were surprised to find they had unwittingly become a part of an historic event. 

It was reported that the line's first car was an old horse-drawn carriage made over into a trolley car and when enough people stood on one end, the other end would come up. 1906 heralded the second car for the Prescott and Mount Union Railroad which was thirty feet long, could seat 28 passengers and had an adjustable vestibule at either end to afford the operator protection from inclement weather. 

The cars ran from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Five cents was the fare and the last run to Fort Whipple was always heavy with soldiers who had walked to town but rode the rails back to the Fort to get back by evening curfew. 

When Fort Whipple was declared obsolete and all troops withdrawn in 1912, the Prescott and Mount Union Railroad lost their major paying customers and went out of business. The large car was sold to the Tucson Transit Company and the smaller car given away. Like tents quietly folded in the night, the rails were quickly dismantled and sold for scrap and a piece of Prescott's history vanished from the landscape. 

Frank sold his company and relocated to Phoenix where he took up well drilling. The Prescott Electric Company was taken over by the Arizona Power Company and the telephone business went to Consolidated Telephone and Telegraph Company. 

(Terry Munderloh is a volunteer at the Sharlot Hall Museum's Archives) 



Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(st106p).
Reuse only by permission.
From 1905 to 1912 Prescott had its own streetcar system that ran from Park Avenue to Fort Whipple. The arrival of electricity in Prescott in 1894 changed the town as newspaper presses, government offices, and hotels switched from wood, kerosene, and other forms of power.