By Mick Woodcock

In Part One last week, we learned something about Amasa G. Dunn, an early Prescott pioneer, businessman and lawman.  In 1869 he had a horrible year.  1870 would be worse.

By Mick Woodcock

Arizona was a violent place in 1870.  The November 19, 1870, Weekly Arizona Miner detailed seventeen killings around the territory.  One headline, “Out On Bail,” referred to a shooting reported in the previous week’s paper.

By Brad Courtney

Prescott is the bearer of several well-known legends. One wonders why an event that happened on Whiskey Row on June 28, 1896, is not one of those widely told stories.

By Brad Courtney

It was called "a dastardly deed.” The work of a demon. It was human emotion gone terribly wrong, and at that time considered the greatest atrocity in Prescott’s 32-year history.

By Ron Williams

It is a staple of modern westerns: The Earps ride into Arizona.  Everyone wants them to be lawmen, but they claim to be retired.  Hollywood presents Virgil and Wyatt resistant to strapping on their guns in Tombstone and everywhere else.  That has made for compelling story lines, but it is far from the truth.  Both always gravitated towards law enforcement.  Being peace officers was always their core profession.

By Mick Woodcock

During World War I, home front war work was an important part of the effort to win the war. From the very beginning, national organizations were asked to participate in various ways.  This would trickle down to local communities such as Prescott and other towns in Arizona.

By Mick Woodcock

Victorians celebrated the coming of the New Year in a number of ways over the time that Victoria was queen of England, 1837 to 1901. It would seem that she was the reason that people in England and the United States gave the day any importance. The Queen was taken with the Scottish tradition of celebrating Hogmanay, which was the last day of the year. In Scotland it was celebrated by the giving of small gifts and the tradition of “First-foot” which meant that one received visitors on New Year’s Day.

(Condensed from an article written by Sharlot M. Hall, founder of Sharlot Hall Museum, that first appeared in the Prescott Courier on December 24, 1930.)

Counting miners, soldiers, pack-train owners and all, there might have been two or three hundred men in reach of Prescott that Christmas season -- that late December of 1864.  There were half a dozen families, mostly with several children; most of them arrived in October on a California-bound train and decided to try their fortune in Arizona instead of going on further west.

By Mick Woodcock

The war put a crimp in the Holiday celebrations in 1917.  Not only were some families missing members who were gone in direct support of the war effort, but also a number of other factors conspired to dampen yuletide spirits.

By Tom Schmidt

Although schools existed in private homes in early Prescott, the hand-hewn log cabin built at the corner of Granite and Carleton Streets in 1868 or 1869 by Samuel Curtis Rogers provided the first schoolhouse for Prescott’s children. Rogers, who helped develop and taught in California’s first rural public school district, used borrowed books and his own library to teach his students. The schoolhouse served not only as Prescott’s but also Northern Arizona’s first schoolhouse.