By Bob Harner

While the Central Highlands of Arizona has its share of famous historical figures, we should also remember the many ordinary people in Arizona’s past whose courage and hard work helped transform a territorial wilderness. Today the remains of a stone cabin and a pair of graves are among the few reminders that ordinary people like Wales and Sarah Arnold lived here.

By Elizabeth Bourgault

Throughout Yavapai County’s history, war has impacted the lives of those who served and those who were left behind. The Vietnam War was one of our longest wars. According to U.S. casualty reports, 58,220 (numbers vary) service men and women died during the conflict. Twenty of those were from Yavapai County. Still listed as Missing in Action (MIA) is Lieutenant Commander Dennis Stanley Pike from Bagdad.

By Robert Estrada

In 2017 during a quest to discover an indigenous family history, three separate tales coalesced into the story of an Apache woman known as Lulu Verde. Captured by the Army as a toddler in the 1870s, Lulu lived with Euro-Americans and married a white man in the 1880s.

First mention of Lulu came from Mr. Vincent Randall, Director of the Yavapai-Apache Cultural Center at the Yavapai-Apache Nation, who relayed the legend of a family member who spent her life with whites following a massacre. The Camp Verde Journal of November 30, 1994 mentioned that the earliest Euro-American settlers in the Verde Valley adopted an Apache girl “as their daughter.” National Park Historian Jack Beckman referred to her in his memoirs, recording that homesteaders Wales and Sarah Arnold raised a young Apache girl “as their beloved daughter.” With the assistance of Sheila Stubler at Fort Verde State Park and later interviews, Lulu’s descendants provided answers to many previously unanswered questions.  

By Stuart Rosebrook

Over Labor Day weekend in September 1970, screenwriter Jeb Rosebrook received a call from his agent Mike Wise. “Robert Redford wants a rodeo story. Do you have one?” Wise asked. Little did the agent know that his North Hollywood-based writer had just written a first draft of “Bonner,” a short story about an aging rodeo star whose career, family and hometown are all on the line. Wise also didn’t know “Bonner” was a highly personal tale about my father’s adopted hometown. Rosebrook had found his inspiration for “Bonner” after a short visit back to Prescott on July 4th for the 1970 World’s Oldest Rodeo. Little did anyone know the short story would change the fate of so many, so quickly—especially our family.
 

By Marjory J. Sente

Summer of 1895 proved to be a watershed season for women living in Prescott. A leader in the women’s movement came to town, provided them with inspiration, and they never looked back.

When Mrs. May Wright Sewall joined her husband Theodore in Phoenix in March 1895, she was front page news for the Arizona Republican. An article in its March 27 issue was titled “A Worker for Women” and detailed many of her accomplishments, including organizing the World’s Congress of Women at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

By Heidi Osselaer

Who would be crazy enough to hire a sports commentator who did not know the difference between a box score and a boxcar? Who thought the little cushions on the baseball diamond were there in case a player fell?  Lyle Abbott, the city editor of the Arizona Republican newspaper, that’s who. And as it turned out, his hiring of Sally Jacobs, the paper’s society editor, to be a sportswriter was a stroke of pure genius.
 

By Ken Leja

The idea was to offer a one-day event where one could enjoy a wide range of history lectures, talks and multi-media presentations. Featuring authors, historians and educators discussing a variety of subjects relevant to Western history and heritage, each free talk would showcase the legend and lore of the wild West.

Thus began Prescott’s Western History Symposium. Fred Veil, then-sheriff (president) of the Prescott Corral of Westerners, floated the idea to local aficionados in 2003. The director of Sharlot Hall Museum at the time, Richard Sims, liked the idea and appointed Warren Miller, head of the Museum’s Education programs, to work with Veil to develop and present the first program.

By Barbara Patton

The past two years have been challenging for our teachers and students alike in dealing with the invisible danger of Covid 19.
 

However, back in 1880, the dangers young Angie Mitchell faced in the wilds of the Arizona frontier were very visible and physical. They were certainly more adventurous than she expected when she agreed to teach in a new Tonto Basin school near present-day Roosevelt Dam.
 

By Eric Jacobson

A deserted mansion in Clarkdale is all that remains in Arizona as evidence of the massive fortune of William Andrews Clark, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and the town’s namesake. Constructed in the 1930’s by Clark’s grandson, William T. Clark, the mansion partially burned in 2010 under suspicious circumstances.

By Melanie Sturgeon

On July 23, 1914 Frances Willard Munds announced that she would seek the nomination for State senator from Yavapai County. This would not have been possible without her dedicated efforts as the leader of the Votes for Women campaign that granted Arizona women not only the right to vote in 1912 but to run for elected office. This was eight years before the passage of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution.