By Sally Bates

“Cowboy” poetry is as old as the trail driving days following the Civil War when young men working horseback in the great American West brought with them elements of the British ballad tradition. Using the form of poetry they had learned to recite in school, kitchen, or parlor they recorded events and passed on traditions. Favorite songs and stories about experiences on the cattle drives or ranches became their unique way of sharing experiences — past and present. It was not strange to hear many different versions of old ballads revised to hold new personal experiences. Nor would it be unusual for them to write lines to old songs and spirituals using the rhyme and meter presented therein. 

By Mick Woodcock

By Al Bates

On the evening of March 13, 1997, widely scattered reports came in from across Arizona—including Prescott, Prescott Valley and Dewey-Humboldt—of mysterious lights crossing the sky.  This phenomenon, now popularly called “The Phoenix Lights,” is still a topic of controversy.

By Ken Edwards

Before the “Great Fire” of 1900 in downtown Prescott, a three-story stone and brick hotel stood on the southwest corner of Montezuma and Goodwin streets.  Generally known as the Scopel Hotel, it was officially the Grand View House.

By Ray Carlson

Moving the Territorial capital back to Prescott in 1877 increased exposure for the Prescott Free Academy.  That school had been built a year earlier to replace the town’s one room schoolhouse. A good-sized two story multi-room brick building with a bell tower, it was the most impressive building in town. As a result, offices for the Governor, Territorial Secretary and Chief Justice were created on the Academy’s second floor.

By Ray Carlson

According to the newspaper, 1876 was a good year for Prescott.  There were “about two hundred” attractive new buildings including the impressive school. Stores and saloons were busy, and prostitutes and robbers who followed wealth were plentiful.  

For many Americans today, the name “Baylor” brings to mind a major college in Texas known for sports and scholarship. Founded in 1845, it’s the oldest university in Texas and one of the oldest in the west, named for Judge Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor. In Arizona, the name Baylor is remembered because of Judge Baylor’s nephew, John R. Baylor, who created the Confederate Territory of Arizona in August 1861, setting off a chain reaction leading to the establishment of the United States’ Territory of Arizona.

By Barbara Patton

On a hot July day in 1864, a group of settlers rolled into the frontier town of Prescott.  The wagon train in the company of soldiers bound for Fort Whipple and under the leadership of Joseph Ehle had traveled down from Denver through Indian country.  Three of the wagons carried the household goods of the Ehle family, and Mrs. Margaret Ehle and their five daughters rode in a repurposed hearse.

By Cindy Gresser

The year was 1935.  At the Fair Grounds there was a giant pile of stone and debris that would make excellent base fill for roadways and foundations around the growing City of Prescott.

By Mick Woodcock

The hydraulic method of mining was developed in California in 1853 to better exploit gold-bearing gravel deposits. It used a canvas hose with a metal nozzle to direct a high-pressure stream of water to erode dirt along rivers and stream beds. The resulting slurry, gold-bearing mud and water, was then directed through a sluice box where the gold settled out and the rest was deposited at the edge of the river.