By Mick Woodcock

What effect could a strike in 1894 by workers at the Pullman railway car manufacturing plant on the edge of Chicago have on a mountain town 1700 miles away? You might think little to none, which turned out to be true except for minor inconveniences. Prescott had rail service by 1887 from the Prescott and Arizona Central. However, this was never successful and it was eclipsed by the Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix in 1893. By 1894 the tracks went beyond the city and headed south toward Phoenix. Had the Pullman strike happened earlier, it would have had no effect on Prescott.

By Bob Baker

After several train robberies in the Arizona Territory, the territorial legislature made train robbery a separate crime punishable by death. The law was passed on March 1, 1889. Less than three weeks after its passage, a sensational train robbery occurred that many believed would result in the death penalty for the train robbers under the new law.
 

On March 27, 1889, Prescott’s newspaper, the Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner, gave this account of the train robbery that occurred on March 20th while the eastbound Atlantic and Pacific train was stopped at Canyon Diablo Station east of Flagstaff.
 

By Marjory J. Sente

Traveling Chautauquas lasting up to a week took place in Prescott into the 1920s and brought culture and educational experiences. They were a combination of lectures, dramas and musical presentations.
 

In July 1916 Frontier Days and Chautauqua Week kept the attention of Arizonans on Prescott. Frontier Days (featuring the rodeo) was held July 4-7; Chautauqua Week started on the 18th. The April 5, 1916 Weekly Journal Miner boasted that “July will be a banner month in the history of Prescott as the ‘Playground of Arizona’.”  It noted, “The striking difference between the two will furnish an attraction for both the fun-seeker and he or she who wants entertainment that is at the same time of educational benefit.”
 

By Marjory J. Sente

Bishop John Heyl Vincent, the Chautauqua Institution’s founder, and Lewis Miller, an Ohio businessman with deep religious roots, called an assembly in 1874 to train Sunday school teachers. The site of the initial two-week meeting was an old Methodist revival camp on the shores of Lake Chautauqua near Jamestown, New York. Nearly 15,000 people attended the assembly, and out of it grew the Chautauqua Movement. The movement took its name from the nearby lake, an Iroquois word referring to two moccasins tied together, which describes the shape of the lake.
 

By Sandra Lynch

Historians and archaeologists who speak with Yavapai tribal elders about their past learn that Yavapai history is measured in millennia - not centuries. Until the 1800s, Yavapai bands occupied a territory of over 20,000 square miles of Arizona - one-sixth of Arizona’s land mass - that included deserts, grasslands, canyons and mountains. Given what we know about Arizona’s deserts, grasslands, canyons and mountains - it begs this question: HOW?
 

By Worcester P. Bong

In 1894 Prescott Electric Company provided the first electrical service for Prescott using steam-generated power. By the early 1900s, as central Arizona communities and the mining industry expanded, the reliability of electrical service became increasingly important. This occurred with the construction of the Childs-Irving hydroelectric power plants on Fossil Creek.
 

By Mick Woodcock

Whether Gustav Barth, Jr. actually had nine lives we don’t know. However, during his time in Prescott as a railroad man, he experienced several accidents that indicated he was in a dangerous occupation, constantly exposed to situations that could cut his life short or alter it drastically.

Prescott’s newspaper, the Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner, noted in its February 7, 1894 issue that, “Gus Barth, a railroad man from Santa Fe, New Mexico, arrived here yesterday, for a visit to his sister, Mrs. W. S. Goldsworthy. He may remain here permanently.” Mrs. Goldsworthy’s husband was the local ticket agent for the new railroad being built through central Arizona - the Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix.

By Jenny Pederson

Sharlot Mabridth Hall was a woman of many accomplishments, eventually becoming an historian, advocate and writer. Much of her inspiration came from the surrounding landscape and her experiences as a ranch woman. Born on the Kansas prairie in 1870, she and her family arrived in the Prescott area in 1882. After an attempt at cattle ranching, Sharlot’s father James tried his hand at mining. However, by 1890, Sharlot’s family permanently settled on a patch of ranch land in Lonesome Valley about 15 miles southeast of Prescott. That land was named Orchard Ranch, and it would remain Sharlot’s home until 1927. An announcement dated August 6, 1890, in the Journal-Miner mentions that the completed Hall house “will be one of the finest and most substantial in that section of country.”
 

By Bob Baker

As soldiers, miners and others flooded the newly discovered gold fields in the central Arizona Territory, the food supply, particularly of meat, became stressed as local wildlife disappeared. Beef in particular was very desirable and expensive. In December 1863, the U.S. Army brought 500 beef cattle and 700 working cattle with them when they established Fort Whipple at Del Rio Springs, sparking the cattle ranching industry in Northern Arizona.

Early ranchers in Lonesome Valley (which now encompasses Chino Valley, Prescott Valley and Dewey-Humboldt) grazed their cattle throughout the valley on open range. The cattle roamed freely, intermixing without regard to ownership. The roundup (or rodeo in Spanish) enabled the cattle ranchers to systematically gather and segregate their cattle from those of other ranchers using the same open range.

By Mick Woodcock

Last week we learned about the August 16, 1898 explosion of the boiler of the Number 2 engine owned by the Santa Fe, Prescott and Phoenix Railway that killed two men and injured two others. Parts of the locomotive were thrown into town, the largest piece of which was the outside of the boiler and steam chest.

The other large piece of machinery sent airborne was an air pump. According to the newspaper, “The air-pump which landed in the middle of Cortez street, bounded about forty or fifty feet from where it struck, like a rubber ball, lighting in close proximity to a woman who was just crossing the street. Occupants of A. J. Head’s residence were badly frightened by the shrieking, singing noise of the pump as it passed over the house.”