By Cindy Gresser

The year was 1935.  At the Fair Grounds there was a giant pile of stone and debris that would make excellent base fill for roadways and foundations around the growing City of Prescott.

By Mick Woodcock

The hydraulic method of mining was developed in California in 1853 to better exploit gold-bearing gravel deposits. It used a canvas hose with a metal nozzle to direct a high-pressure stream of water to erode dirt along rivers and stream beds. The resulting slurry, gold-bearing mud and water, was then directed through a sluice box where the gold settled out and the rest was deposited at the edge of the river.

Margaret Ann Bridget (Donahue) Fitzgerald was born on September 17, 1860 in Phoenicia, Ulster County, New York. She was the daughter of Irish-born parents John Donahue and Bridget (Mahoney) Donahue. On June 4, 1882, she married Patrick James Fitzgerald in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, which was under construction at the time of their marriage. Margaret spent her life as a housewife and mother, giving birth to ten children, eight of whom lived to adulthood.

By Brad Courtney

Daniel Connor “D. C.” Thorne may have been early Whiskey Row’s most influential figure, and its most colorful. He was a story himself, and stories swirled around him. Thorne founded the Cabinet Saloon in 1874, which became the heartbeat of pre-1900 Whiskey Row.

By Kylin Cummings

Since the beginning, railroads have used a variety of signaling systems to communicate in rail yards and along the railroad line. 

Mary Etta (Jones) Gibson, daughter of Levi Cashes and Lida Ann (Turner) Jones, was born in Skull Valley, Yavapai County, Arizona Territory, on August 16, 1894. Her father was a teamster who hauled sand and gravel by wagon to help build the Yavapai County courthouse, in addition to doing some farming and ranching. When the 1900 census was enumerated the family had moved and was living on S. Granite St. in Prescott.

Louisa Elizabeth F. Wilson was born in 1820 in Kentucky. Her birthdate is not known, nor are her parents’ names. She married Charles Francis Wilson, a merchant, in Missouri. In the 1860 Missouri Federal Census, Charles is no longer mentioned. Whether he passed away or left is not known.

Nellie Mae (Beal) Francis, daughter of Martha (Hatfield) and Marvin Beal, was born on December 22, 1865, in Utica, Oneida County, New York. Nellie came to the West with her family. After spending several years in Texas, her father and his brother Frank traveled to the frontier railroad town of Flagstaff, Yavapai County, Arizona Territory, where the two brothers built a saloon and restaurant.

By Tom Collins

Prescott’s theatregoers gobbled up the pompous press puffs that heralded the arrival on January 3rd, 1896, of Lillian Lewis’s lavish production of Sardou’s Cleopatra at Patton’s Opera House on Gurley Street.  Known in New York City as a modern drama queen, Miss Lewis was proclaimed (by her husband and manager Lawrence Marston) as “the foremost American actress” and superior, in this role, to Sarah Bernhardt herself!  Her leading man, Edmund Collier, was “the successor to that great classical actor, John McCullough.” (Miner, Jan. 1, 1896).  The scenery and special effects dazzled, but the discerning might have cringed at the acting.

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.