By Bob Cornett

The western half of the North American continent contained a million square miles in 1800, all unknown to the U.S. citizens in the eastern half. For expansion westward, maps and handbooks were needed. We know there were more than 40 major surveys and mapping reports from the time of Lewis and Clark (1804-1806) up to the General Land Office surveys of the late 1850s. Americans believed that it was their God-given right to settle the West (Manifest Destiny), and the path had to be cleared.

By Bob Cornett

Next to the west door of the Sharlot Hall building on the museum grounds in Prescott is an 1859 map of the United States commissioned by Col. Carlos Butterfield. It shows ocean shipping routes, mail and stage routes, and four proposed railway routes west.

By Marjory J. Sente

On Oct. 27, 1948, the Prescott Post Office opened to a very special day of business. The issuance of the Rough Riders Commemorative Stamp made the post office look like a land office during a gold rush. While the local public bought the new commemorative stamp at the counter, more than 50 special employees worked behind the scenes to process the requests for first-day covers.

By Marjory J. Sente

October 27, 1948. What a day for Prescott: Navy Day, former President Theodore Roosevelt’s 90th birthday anniversary and, yes, the first day of issue of the Rough Riders commemorative postage stamp at Prescott, Arizona. For that one-day in October of 1948, the eyes of the stamp collecting and first day cover world were focused on Prescott.

By Katherine Krieger Pessin

Medora had finally achieved her longtime goal of becoming a field geologist with the USGS and was assigned to Prescott, Ariz., in 1947. She spent the next 35 years mapping in the State of Arizona, a total of 12 quadrangles, including those of Prescott and Paulden. She has to her credit many professional papers for publication with the USGS as well as other scientific organizations.

By Katherine Krieger Pessin

My mother, Medora Hooper Krieger, was one of the most prolific geologic mappers at the USGS during the twentieth century. Although her early training and work was in the eastern United States, particularly in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, she is known mostly for her 35 years of mapping in the State in Arizona, where she did what was considered a man’s job in a world that was considered a man’s world.

By Richard Cunningham McCormick

(Edited by Parker Anderson)

I was at Washington at the first inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, and saw much of him. It was difficult, even in view of the Baltimore plot, to make him think that anyone sought to injure him, or that his life was in danger. The intention of that plot, by the by, suggests a correction of the common impression that Mr. Lincoln passed through Baltimore in disguise.

By Richard Cunningham McCormick

(Edited by Parker Anderson)

(Richard McCormick was the second Territorial Governor of Arizona who lived in the Governor’s Mansion in Prescott with his wife Margaret. Previously, he had been a prominent politician on the East Coast and, in 1866, wrote a series of articles for the New York Evening Post. One detailed his own personal memories of President Abraham Lincoln, who had been assassinated the year before. On March 14, 1866, the Arizona Miner printed a few excerpts from this lengthy article. These are reprinted below; probably the first widely circulated reprinting of Governor McCormick’s comments since 1866. – ed)

By Darla Anderson

Darla Anderson moved to Yarnell in the early 1960s with her parents. As a young lady, the old mining tales fascinated her, and living so close to one of Arizona’s premium mines was just too much to just sit by and look at it from afar. Rich Hill was a short distance from their home and, one sunny afternoon, she and her mother decided to take a closer look.

By Darla Anderson

(Darla Anderson was born on a small stock farm in Postville, Iowa, and lived there until she reached adulthood. In 1958, she vacationed in Arizona with her parents, Alpha and Vera Hangartner, and fell in love with the state. They moved to Yarnell in the early 1960s. There she married Harry M. Anderson of North Dakota and they lived in Congress at the base of the mountain below Yarnell.)