By Wayne J. Orchard

(Last week in Part I, we found our author and his companions exploring Cottonwood and looking forward to pilot training for the United States Navy during World War II. The armed forces were faced with a shortage of pilots, and Cottonwood and Prescott became bases for the War Training Service (WTS) Program to assist with alleviating that shortage.)

Some of the shop owners in town emptied out back rooms to be used as classrooms. Our teachers were from the Northern Arizona College at Flagstaff. They were very impressive and knowledgeable. They taught classes in aircraft recognition, Morse code, science of flight and other subjects sandwiched in between.

By Wayne J. Orchard

The year is 1943 and America is at war. For the first time in its history, it was fighting on two fronts. The war was raging in Europe and the Atlantic Ocean, and occasioned by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, it was fighting in the Pacific. The Navy and ground forces were island hopping throughout the Pacific making their way slowly towards enemy headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Casualties were heavy on all fronts. America called all able-bodied men into its forces, and the Army, Marines, Navy and Coast Guard were all facing manpower shortages. Aviation was a relatively new tool in a combat mode. World War I had seen limited air combat, some strafing and bombing, but otherwise aircraft in combat was still untested.

By Marian Powell

In Sharlot Hall Museum's main lobby, there is a book open for all visitors to investigate. Within the book are stories of the over 400 women represented in the Territorial Women's Memorial Rose Garden on the Sharlot Hall Museum Heritage Campus. Biographies and photographs tell the story of each extraordinary woman and place them in the larger context of Territorial Arizona's history. From housewives and mothers to business professionals, each woman had something to offer the various communities within our region. Particularly important were the teachers of the frontier. This article will explore a few of the significant educators represented in the Rose Garden.

By Parker Anderson

The mountain town of Jerome, today a quiet, tourist-oriented hamlet, was a wild and wooly mining camp in the late 19th century thru the 1920s. A vast array of respectable and not so respectable characters congregated there. Among them a barber named Richard Cross.

Very little is known of his background, except that he hailed from Illinois. Why he ended up in Jerome is also unknown. What is known is that, while he was there, he became infatuated and/or obsessed with a woman who did not return his love.

By Bill Lynam

Pick a clear day, bring your walking stick and gloves, a Global Positioning System (GPS) instrument, if you've got one, but it's not necessary, and head up the trail at Stricklin Park from the Butte Creek trail head. The start of the trail is on Sherwood Road, just one street west on Gurley Street past The Hassayampa Village turn off. The Cowboy's Prayer awaits you at the top of the trail.

By Lorri Carlson

When considering the history of the Chinese in Prescott, I repeatedly ask "why?" Why would so many individuals leave their families, homes and the homeland of their ancestors? Why would they leave so much behind? Why would they take such risks and face such uncertainty? Indeed, the hope of finding gold in the Western United States during the second half of the 19th century lured Easterners and Europeans in addition to the Asian population. It is my intent to understand what circumstances pushed the emigrants to leave China.

By Mick Woodcock

On the last day of the year 1906, Frank G. Ellis, M. D. of Annapolis, Missouri, was the subject of a letter that would forever change his life. It was a form letter, much as any U. S. government form letter sent from the Office of Indian Affairs. The printing in the body of the letter was in an attractive script. The substance of the message was typed in the blank spaces at the ends of sentences. It would send the good doctor on a rail and wagon trip to one of the more remote areas of the Arizona Territory: the Colorado River Agency.

By Danny Freeman

The word rodeo in Spanish means to surround or round up. In reality there have been "rodeos" or round ups in America since the Spanish people brought cattle and horses to the New World in the 1500's. Today, however, "rodeo" to Americans means organized events of cowboy contests. In most parts of the United States and Canada rodeo is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable but in Mexico, and sometimes in California, the accent can be found on the second syllable.

By Lester "Budge" Ruffner

He died on Christmas Day, 1934, when the country was in the icy grip of both the depression and the Democrats. Governor of Arizona for seven terms during his career, this remarkable achievement earned him the sobriquet "George VII."

George Wylie Paul Hunt would have been a difficult client for the political image-makers of today. In all fairness, he could not be called either physically or intellectually attractive. Pumpkin-shaped and barely literate, his standard dress was a white linen suit, wool cap and high, black, laced shoes, winter and summer.

By Mona Lange McCroskey

Lillie Murphy Cook was born in a house on the corner of McCormick and Gurley Streets, where the Bashford House now stands, on April 24, 1897. At the time of her interview, in 1994, she was living just up the hill at the Arizona Pioneers' Home. Her little brothers, Lee and Lloyd Murphy, then also in their nineties, were there at the same time. In the intervening ninety-seven years, Lillie had grown up and lived in Prescott (she always said "Pres-cott") and remembered life as it was in the early twentieth century.