By Mick Woodcock

Central Arizona’s mineral riches first drew Anglo prospectors in 1863. Gold was the original metal, but silver and copper were also discovered and mined with more or less success. Remote locations and mountainous terrain made moving the ore and building smelters to process it very difficult. Large freight wagons pulled by multiple mule teams were the only source of transport.

Irene Luzzatto (Coen) La Guardia was born July 18, 1859 to Fiona (Luzzatto) and Isac Abram Coen, in Rijeka, Croatia, near what is now Trieste, Italy. In Trieste, Achille Luigi Carlo La Guardia met, and later married Irene on June 3, 1880. She was taken by her suitor’s good looks and sophisticated worldly charm and the prospect of going to America.  He was impressed with her social status, poise, and schooling. She was fluent in Italian, Hebrew, and German. She was a descendant of a prestigious Italian-Jewish family of scholars and poets. Theirs was a civil marriage officiated by the Mayor of Trieste. Shortly after wedding, the couple left for the United States. Their first two children were born in New York City, New York: Gemma on April 24, 1881, and Fiorello on December 11, 1882.

By Brad Courtney

One would think that the Keystone Saloon on Cortez Street had accommodated enough death. Although three suicides had taken place there between 1885-87, it hadn’t yet hosted a homicide. That would change eight years later over a dispute of seventy-five cents.

By Brad Courtney

If any early Prescott saloon was cursed, it was Cortez Street’s Keystone Saloon. It was possibly sited where Lyzzard’s Lounge is today.

Its first proprietor, Gotlieb Urfer, came to America from Switzerland sometime before the Civil War. He arrived in Prescott in 1874, opened a lodging house on Cortez in 1877, and eventually added a saloon, naming it the Keystone Saloon and Lodging House. He married Ellen Dunn of Ireland in 1878.

By Mick Woodcock

Based on the Days Past article of Nov 29, 2014.

What follows are excerpts from articles about Christmas in early Prescott. We hope this will give you an idea of what our predecessors thought of the holiday and how they observed it.

By Dana Brisendine Sharp

McCabe, Arizona, once a thriving town . . . is no more.  Located in the Big Bug Mining District, the little town was about four miles southwest of Humboldt and a couple miles from the Huron siding on the Prescott and Middleton Branch of the AT & SF Railroad.

By Bob Harner

Despite risking his life to successfully persuade Geronimo to surrender for the last time, Lieutenant Charles Gatewood remains largely unacknowledged today, primarily because his unyielding commitment to defending the rights of Apache  men and women (the term “Apache” includes what today are known as Yavapai) alienated him from his Army superiors and peers.

By Alexandra Piacenza

From their beginnings, Sacred Heart’s and Prescott’s history have been entwined. As early as 1540 Catholic priest Father Juan de Padilla, a spiritual leader of the Coronado expedition, may have encountered some of the native people of the area as the expedition traveled east of Arizona's central highlands. Church history suggests that it would be more than 230 years before they may have been visited again, this time by Franciscan missionary Father Francisco Hermenegildo Garcés in 1776. Yet another century passed before the first resident pastor, Father F.C. Becker, arrived.

By Brad Courtney

So great is the shadow cast by Tombstone’s 1881 shootout at the OK Corral, it isn’t widely known that the law-enforcement career of Virgil Earp began in Prescott. Its launching point was a prominent saloon on Whiskey Row.

By Brad Courtney

In October 1868, after Albert Noyes, early Prescott’s lumber magnate, completed his much anticipated 3600 square-foot, two-story building on the southwest corner of Montezuma and Gurley Streets, he decided to sell it to Andrew “Doc” Moeller, owner of Granite Street’s legendary Quartz Rock Saloon. Prescottonians were excited, because “Moeller’s new building” marked the newest step in Prescott’s evolution. It would function as the village’s centerpiece, go-to saloon, and meeting place for civic organizations for many years.