By Brad Courtney

This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial.

There are many marvelous Prescott legends that are a delight to read or hear and, of course, retell.  Some, when researched thoroughly, reveal themselves as spectacular yarns.  Others are part truth, part fable, often based on a true story, but along the way the temptation to embellish and throw in extra characters and events proved too strong to their tellers.  Perhaps some are culminations of oral history gone wild.  One endearing and enduring piece of Prescott folklore, however, is a combination of certain true, distinct, and even related events.  Such is the legend of the Quartz Rock Saloon.

It begins during Prescott’s earliest days with an enterprising pioneer, Isaac Goldberg, who, improvised a makeshift cantina on the banks of Granite Creek—a shanty covering a crude, wooden-board counter, two bottles of whiskey, and a single tin cup.  It was called the “Quartz Rock Saloon,” and was an instant success.  However, as the story goes, Goldberg ran into problems when intoxicated patrons either stumbled face down into the stream, or became nauseated from gazing at the trickling water.  Consequently, the proprietor moved to the newly formed Montezuma Street.  This cantina, it is theorized, was the seed that eventually sprouted a crop of saloons which later would be dubbed “Whisky Row.”

Unlike many legends replete with adornments and distortions, the Quartz Rock Saloon legend is merely an alteration of the truth.  There was an Isaac Goldberg who told his story in 1894 to the Society of Arizona Pioneers.  Arriving in the Prescott area during the mid-summer of 1864, he did indeed set up a saloon of sorts with a “rude counter which concealed sundry bottles of whiskey.”  This plank bar exposed only the reputed two bottles while each dram of whiskey was sold for fifty cents from one tin cup.  His assistant, who often appears in the folklore version of this operation, was an AWOL soldier with most of his nose missing.  Goldberg never mentions a creek, or a name for his business.  Nevertheless, his set-up may have actually been Prescott’s first wholesale/retail liquor undertaking, if not saloon.

In the thirteenth Arizona Miner, September 7, 1864, Goldberg advertised his firm for the first time, and was the first Prescott liquor wholesaler/retailer to do so.  This advertisement mentions that Goldberg was now selling his wares out of the Juniper House.  For Whiskey Row historians, this is an intriguing juxtaposition.  The Juniper House, founded by the multifaceted George Barnard, bore a conspicuously similar history as that of Goldberg’s cantina.

The Juniper House is, irrefutably, Prescott’s first food and beverage go-to spot, but, like Goldberg’s liquor stand, it also began in primitive style.  One witness noted that the “progressively inclined” Barnard had “no house nor stove” when he first opened in 1864.  Rather, he cooked his cuisine over an open campfire by a sizable juniper tree.  Eventually nail and lumber sheltered a workable restaurant, where Goldberg’s spirits provided a welcome addition.  Several noteworthy sources point to it as being established on the Plaza side of Montezuma Street.  If so, the Juniper House with Goldberg’s cantina attached would make it the first of its kind amongst the area that would become known throughout the Southwest as Whiskey Row.

Goldberg’s libations set-up has four possible competitors vying for the distinction of being Prescott’s first bona fide saloon.  One was opened on November 14, 1864, by the controversial, but influential frontiersman William Hardy—who founded the Colorado River town, Hardyville, which later became Bullhead City—with an “inauguration” from a local club of townsmen called the “Barbarians.”  The Barbarians’ mission was to “properly [celebrate] important events” marking Prescott’s progress.  Opening a bar featuring the best billiard table in the territory with a saloon offering “a better class of liquors than we have been used to in Prescott” was certainly, in their minds, significant progress.  The saloon was christened “The Quartz Rock.”  It was located on Granite Street along the banks of Granite Creek.  There it stayed and operated successfully for almost 7 years.  The Juniper House floundered, and soon both Goldberg and Barnard moved on to other entrepreneurial experiments.

It is unusual when truth is more amusing than legend.  The Quartz Rock Saloon and Juniper House histories are, arguably, exemplars of such an occurrence.

Days Past is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). The public is encouraged to submit articles for consideration.  Please contact SHM Library & Archives reference desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastprescott@gmail.com for information.