By Karla Burkitt

The lovely and pure young woman is tied tightly to a railroad track while the villain wearing a top hat twirls his mustache. The train is bearing down. Will our hero arrive in time to save her? Mention the word melodrama and this is probably the first image that pops into the reader's mind. This is, of course, the type of dramatic presentation that we file under the name "Melodrama"; but what about soap operas, movies, and American Idol?

By Al Bates

The Walker party's route from Fort West, New Mexico, took them through Apache Pass (at night, since the Apaches after Chief Mangus' death were even more aggressive than before), through Tucson and the Pima/Maricopa villages at the juncture of the Salt and Gila rivers, and then to Maricopa Wells. From Maricopa Wells they most likely duplicated the path taken by Swilling three years earlier to encounter and then go up the unnamed river to its headwaters.

By Al Bates

Anyone who has studied Arizona Territorial history will recognize the names of Jack Swilling and Joseph R. Walker and will remember something of their contributions to those early days. But what most people do not know is the early connection between them.

Jack Swilling's best-known contribution to Territorial Arizona was his formation of a company that brought irrigation to the Salt River Valley of Arizona in 1867 and led to the founding of modern metropolitan Phoenix. Walker, on the other hand, is remembered for leading an exploratory party of gold seekers that opened the Central Arizona highlands and the Prescott Tri-City area to Euro-American civilization in 1863.

By Diane (Tenney) Timothy

(As told by Boyd Tenney to Diane (Tenney) Timothy in August 2003)

My family, which consisted of my parents and their ten children, moved to Prescott in June 1925, just after I turned ten years old. We had been living on a ranch in the area of Sunset, in southern Arizona between Wilcox and Thatcher. My father bought a goat ranch on Senator Highway, just south of the Odd Fellows Cemetery. This is still my home. My parents' six youngest children attended Washington School: Opal, Nina Belle, Lyman, Eudora, Edythe, Pearl, and myself.

By Mona Lange McCroskey

Albert William "Bill" Bork, born in Prescott, Arizona Territory in 1906, was the consummate historian. In 1997, after the publication of his biography ("Prescott's Hometown Historian and International Scholar," Cactus and Pine, Sharlot Hall Museum, August 1997), Dr. Bork was concerned because I had not written enough about his wife, Nadyne. He presented me with a copy of his manuscript, "My Life's Partner, Nadyne," a touching tribute to her and a poignant account of their seventy-year marriage.

By Judy Stoycheff

Mary Sandretto Coates, one of the daughters of Dominic and Catherine Sandretto, describes her father as a big man, intelligent, and with a good memory who enjoyed card games of chance. When short of cash and payments were due, it was not unheard of for him to engage in a poker game in one of the establishments on Whiskey Row. Recollections are that he frequently beat the odds and thus made the payment.

By Judy Stoycheff

(When last we left the story of the Sandretto property in northeast Prescott, we became acquainted with the history of the property prior to the Sandretto purchase and the family history of the Sandrettos.)

Dominic Sandretto purchased Section 10 in 1915, and with the assistance of Phillip Brito who had a herd of dairy cows, began a dairy and vegetable farm. Initially, they produced and sold butter (for ten cents a pound) as well as vegetables. This was not enough to support both families, so, according to Dominic's granddaughter, Catherine Miller (personal communication in 1996), Brito moved to Williamson Valley where he found "rum running" to be more profitable.

By Judy Stoycheff

(The author originally wrote this article in the late 1990s as a part of an archaeological report of an excavation done by the Yavapai Chapter of the Arizona Archeological Society in the previous two years. This is part one of a three-part series of Days Past articles on the history of Sandretto Hills.)

The 160 acres about which this history is written is the SW 1/4 of Section 10 Township 14, Range 2 West, located in Yavapai County, Arizona, five miles north of down town Prescott.

By Al Bates

In three previous articles I have shared with you some details about one of this area’s most prominent early settlers, Colonel King S. Woolsey, his political career and sudden death, the “Pinole Treaty’ battle and something about his two wives Lucia and Mary.  However, there may have been an earlier wife, and here’s what I have been able to find.

By Mona Lange McCroskey

Western women in the 19^th-century lived without much fanfare, working hard, bearing children, and caring for the sick. Usually they died as unsung heroines. It was therefore exciting to discover spidery-penciled notations in a fragile ledger kept by Laura Anna Garbarino Bolden in the possession of her granddaughter, Joan Kuhne Looney. Embellished by Joan’s recollections of her, the ledger provides a peek into Laura’s remarkable life.