By David Alfonse (outreach coordinator, Prescott Bee Club)

Residents and visitors love Yavapai County’s great outdoors and many experience the buzzing of our bees. Did you know Arizona and our central highlands are home to over 1300 native bee species? We dwell within diverse topography that gives rise to many different pollen and nectar sources for most of the year, creating a rich bounty of insects. Bees are small, but their contribution to local native indigenous cultures and early settlers in the Arizona Territory was immense. 

Before European contact, “stingless bees” (Melipona Beecheii) were utilized by indigenous Mayan and Aztec cultures in the Americas. Bee products were used for food, medicine and ceremonies, where a fermented drink like meade called balche was consumed. Wax was prized for use in burns. Major indigenous trade routes criss crossed central Arizona, making it possible that these bee products were traded and used locally by the Hohokam, known as “the ones who came before,” long before Arizona was a territory or state. Native bees were also important for the pollination and spread of squash, pumpkin and gourd cultivation in Arizona. Native bees are distinct from the now common honey bee species that came from Europe.

By Marjory J. Sente

Miners wanted to call the townsite Granite City. Others thought Goodwin City was an appropriate name for Arizona's territorial capital. John N. Goodwin was appointed governor of the Arizona Territory after original appointee, John A. Gurley, died in 1863 before the Governor’s Party left Ohio. Some wanted the town named Aztlan in honor of the Aztecs who were thought to have been in the area. Granite Dells, Fleuryville, Gimletville and Audubon were also suggested.

The first printed mention of Prescott as a name for the new town appeared in the May 25, 1864, Arizona Miner. “It is certainly an attractive locality and the name of ‘Prescott’ proposed for the town will be an appropriate commemoration of the great American authority upon Aztec and Spanish-American history.” 

By Ed Sipos

If you are a seasoned beer enthusiast, you might recall a slogan or two that spark memories of a favorite brand. If you or your family grew up in Arizona, you likely heard of A-1 Pilsner Beer, a brand considered by many as “Arizona’s Hometown Beer.” One of its most popular slogans, introduced during the 1940s, was “The Western Way to Say Welcome”. 

This tranquil expression signals “old west” imagery pointing to a time in Arizona when cowboy culture was still dominant in many parts of the state. Several years later, Arizona sports broadcaster Al McCoy, the “Voice of the Suns” for fifty-one years, popularized a new slogan, “That was Good like A-1 Beer,” following key plays by the Phoenix Suns basketball team.

By Marjory J. Sente

Hearing the words “Sharlot Hall,” one usually thinks ”museum,” because it is the most visible legacy of Sharlot M. Hall, who leased the Old Governor’s Mansion in 1927 and went on to establish a museum to house “Indian and historical objects and a library of Arizoniana”. Sharlot, however, has another enduring legacy, her poetry.

Composing poems at a young age, Sharlot admitted that, while attending a school near what is now Dewey, she spent her days composing verses rather than studying. Writing poems to please her mother, Adeline Hall, Sharlot dedicated the second edition of Cactus and Pine: Songs of the Southwest, published in 1924, to her. In it she noted the first edition of Cactus and Pine, published in late 1911, was hurriedly printed so her mother could enjoy it before she died. Mrs. Hall died on August 24, 1912.

By Worcester P. Bong
Since the founding of Fort Whipple in 1863 and the town of Prescott in 1864, local citizens and military personnel have enjoyed reading locally printed newspapers. Newspaper names ranged from Arizona Miner to Prescott Journal-Miner, and from Prescott Evening Courier to today’s The Daily Courier. Fort Whipple started printing the Arizona Miner in March 1864. Two other newspapers, The West’s Recall and The Whipple Echo, were also published locally.

The West’s Recall was published between March 1919 and January 1920, when Fort Whipple became Whipple Barracks, US Army General Hospital No. 20. After hospital operations were transferred from the US Army to the US Public Health Service in February 1920, a different monthly one-page newsletter was published, but was discontinued shortly thereafter. It was not until the Veterans Bureau took over hospital operations in April 1922 that the hospital again published a weekly newspaper. 

By Marjory J. Sente
Born in 1866 near Sacramento, CA, Frances (Fanny) Lillian Willard was the eighth child born to Joel and Mary Grace Vineyard Willard. Among her ancestors was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, a gold miner and politician and temperance advocates.

In 1870 the family relocated to a ranch in Nevada, where access to educational opportunities was limited. For two years, Frances took the daily train to a more advanced school in Palisade and back, acquiring all the education available locally.   

Knowing her daughter thirsted for a good education, Mary sent Frances to live with an older sister and brother-in-law in Pittsfield, Maine. Attending the Maine Central Institute for four years, Frances was dubbed “The Nevada Wildcat” by her New England classmates for her strong will and independence.

By Worcester P. Bong
Books have been written and movies made about the Earp brothers, Virgil and Wyatt. Virgil lived in Prescott, and Wyatt visited here. This is a story about two other brothers, the Ainsworths, who also resided in Prescott. Although their lives were not as colorful as the Earps, the Ainsworth brothers moved on to successful careers.

The Ainsworth brothers, Fred Crayton and Frank Kenley, were born in Woodstock, Vermont. Their parents were Crayton and Harriet (Carroll) Ainsworth. Crayton was a machinist, Harriet a homemaker. Fred was born in September 1852, Frank in October 1856. Both brothers became doctors. Fred attended the Medical Department of the University of the City of New York, graduating in 1874, then enlisted in the US Army Medical Corps as an assistant surgeon.

By Marjory J. Sente
On Sunday July 4, 1926, Prescott’s Frontier Days did not hold any cowboy contests, nor open the Northern Arizona State Fair. After religious and patriotic exercises were held on the Plaza, eyes turned to the sky for an aero show and flying circus. Ground activities included a model airplane contest and dedication of a new landing field, located eight miles northeast of the city on land leased from the Perkins Cattle Company.

Charles Franklin Parker recalled the event in the May 1947 Arizona Highways. “The open field was bladed and marked. Old Ford axles were gathered from local garages and used as tie downs for the ships, and a crew of fellows with shovels filled up the prairie dog holes.”

World War I flying ace and the first barnstorming pilot in Arizona, Captain Bob Hausler, was aviation director for Frontier Days and oversaw the arrangements for the day,

By Nancy Burgess
In a February 2025 Days Past article, Paul Fees wrote about two of Prescott’s extraordinary women, Sharlot Hall and Grace Sparkes, women who got things done. But there was a third member of the triumvirate of Prescott women who got things done: Grace Genung Chapman.  These three women were fondly called “Prescott’s Graces.”

Grace Laura Genung was the daughter of pioneer Yavapai County settlers Charles Baldwin Genung and Ida Elizabeth Smith Genung. The Genungs came to Yavapai County in 1863, before Arizona became a Territory. They settled in Peeples Valley where Charlie hunted, ranched, farmed, mined, built roads and became both a foe, and later a friend, of the Yavapai Indians. Grace was born in Peeples Valley on May 7, 1884, the youngest of the Genung’s eight children. She grew up there and made friends with the Yavapai children, who were her playmates. Her earliest civic-minded interest began in 1898 when she successfully raised $10 for the Arizona Roughrider monument fund.  

By Kristen Kauffman
He was Arizona Librarian of the Year, a deacon, and a family man. He expanded two of the area’s libraries and oversaw a youth center built in Chino Valley in 1995. He was universally acknowledged as a decent human being, fostering mentorships with various community organizations, including the Kiwanis, where he was a charter member. His name was Allen Rothlisberg, and he would have been eighty this year. 

Energetic Rothlisberg was hired in 1963 after two previous library directors sounded the alarm that the Prescott Public Library, formally on Gurley Street, was running out of space. He had just graduated with his Master of Science Degree in Library Science from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. The first thing he tackled was space; when City Hall was built in December 1963, Rothlisberg worked to coordinate storing some library overflow in the basement of that building. He worked with the Prescott Sunrise Lions’ Club to bring a mobile Talking Books Library, a product of the Arizona Regional Library, for the blind and physically handicapped. He also started the first local large print collection at the Prescott Public Library on Gurley street.