By Kristen Kauffman

John P. Bourke (sometimes John T.) served as Yavapai County Sheriff from January 24, 1866, until July 1, 1867. Bourke collected taxes, oversaw the building of a new jail, appointed undersheriffs and oversaw elections. A few times he organized Sheriff’sSales—auctions on the Plaza with proceeds benefiting private owners who couldn’t themselves organize the sale. But some of his other activities read like action-packed westerns.

By Kristen Kauffman

In 1930s Prescott, kids were told to stay away from the dangerous red light district. Postmaster Gail Gardner wouldn’t even name it. To him it was “the restricted zone.” In her oral history archived at the Sharlot Hall Museum, Mittie Cobey recounts a night when she was a teen driving around with a boy after dark. They were not supposed to be near Goodwin and Granite Streets. But on this night, as they neared the alley behind the Hotel St. Michael, Cobey saw a man clutching his belly. Fifty yards behind him, she saw a man holding a gun. She was sure the one man shot the other because the victim was “bothering his girls,” as Cobey said, “the cribs were right there.”

By Marjory J. Sente

Members of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) always have found creative ways to raise money for their projects. Perhaps none was more creative than collecting funds to buy trees when President General Sarah Corbin Robert selected the Penny Pines Project to celebrate the National Society’s golden anniversary in 1940.

 In the late 1930s, the United States faced two major issues—the Great Depression and ecological disasters such as deforestation in the Appalachian Mountains and other forests that were in deplorable condition from over-harvesting, devastating fires and little replanting.

By John Sterr of the Jerome Historical Society

The town we now know as Jerome began in 1876 when Angus McKinnon and Marion A. Ruffner officially recorded their mining claims in the area. As mining increased over the next two decades, a camp sprang up to house, feed and serve the growing population of mines. Mr. Eugene Murray Jerome and Mrs. Paulina Von Scheidau Jerome of New York City secured capital investment in the copper camp. It was named Jerome in 1882.

By Dale O’Dell

(All images provided were photographed by the author, © Dale O’Dell 2023. Reproduction permission granted by the photographer for use by the Prescott Daily Courier and Sharlot Hall Museum. No AI was used to write this article or in the capture and post-processing of the photos. Dale O’Dell contact information: dalesv650@gmail.com , 928-925-0374, www.dalephoto.com).

Sedona and Scottsdale are well known art destinations, but most people don’t realize the entire Southwestern United States is an art destination, including Prescott. This art isn’t in galleries. Two-hundred-plus years ago what appeared to be a vast, empty landscape revealed a treasure of ancient rock art. Petroglyphs (ancient rock carvings) and pictographs (ancient rock paintings) were found in large numbers in what is now Yavapai County and Prescott. These enigmatic artistic symbols were created hundreds, even thousands, of years ago by the possible prehistoric ancestors of what are now local indigenous tribes including, but not limited to, the Navajo, Hopi, Apache and Yavapai-Prescott. The tradition of marking on stone goes back over twenty thousand years.

By Tom Collins

Carrie Stephens, the daughter of Arizona pioneer Varney Stephens, was married off to a scoundrel and poseur named W. Claude Jones when she was just 15 years old. Her groom, 49 years old, who had been Speaker of the House of Representatives for the First Territorial Arizona Legislature, deserted her after just a few months of marriage. Unbeknownst to the Stephens family, he absconded to Hawaii, where he wormed his way into politics and married a young Hawaiian girl descended from nobility.

By Tom Collins

The story of Carrie Stephens, Arizona pioneer, illustrates the subservient position of women in the early years of Prescott’s colorful history. Ambitious businessmen sometimes used their nubile daughters as pawns in a chess game of social and economic advancement in Prescott, a village of about 400 men and only 28 women at the end of its founding year, 1864. The First Territorial Legislature, which convened in Prescott in September 1864, set the age of sexual consent at ten years old, perhaps to facilitate child marriage.

By Worcester P. Bong

In 1844 George Williams founded the first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in London, England. This organization was created to address the needs of young men who moved away from home and found themselves cut off from their religious ties. In 1851 the organization spread to the United States.

By Shannon Williams & Updated by Candice Lewis

The term Downwinder is well known in Yavapai County. Downwind radiation exposure is cited in cancer diagnoses and blamed for the deaths of long-term residents of the county.
 

During the Cold War, the U.S. built a huge nuclear arsenal. Above-ground testing began in 1951 in Nevada where over 100 nuclear bombs were detonated.  In 1958 the U.S., U.K. and USSR agreed to stop all nuclear testing. However, the U.S. detonated several above-ground nuclear devices in 1962. January 21, 1951, to October 31, 1958, and June 30, 1962, to July 31, 1962, when above-ground testing was conducted, were later designated as Downwind time periods.

By Marjory J. Sente

When Miss Agnes B. Todd opened her millinery shop in Prescott in 1910, she had a wealth of experience in the trade.  Born in Missouri in 1872 to Scottish immigrants Robert V. and Jessie N. Todd, she moved with her family sometime after 1880 to southern California. Agnes visited the Grand Canyon on August 25, 1898 and by 1900 she resided in Flagstaff and worked as a milliner. In 1902 she sold her millinery stock and went to work for Babbitt Brothers Dry Goods Store. Her tenure with Babbitt Brothers was punctuated with buying trips for the store, as well as visits to Los Angeles to see her family. In 1908 she left Flagstaff, returning to California. However, the June 25, 1909 Coconino Sun noted that Agnes had spent the past year in Boston and was passing through Flagstaff, visiting friends, on her way home to Los Angeles.