By Tom Collins 

Visitors to the Sharlot Hall Building will find in the military exhibit a faded photo of Carrie Wilkins, the second daughter of Colonel John D. Wilkins of Fort Whipple. Carrie and her sister Ella were, according to military legend, much courted and much desired by the young officers in the 1870s, when women were scarce in this Arizona Territory's rough and male-dominated mining town.

By Al Bates 

On May 10, 1863, at a location just a few miles south of today's Prescott, an event happened that had a significant impact on the future development of both this area and of Arizona Territory. On that date, twenty-five men signed a contract that established the first mining district in the Central Arizona Highlands. 

By Carol Powell 

Sometime in the late 1860s, Clara S. Olmstead Howard, a widow with children, met Louis Miller, an immigrant from Germany. They met and were married in Texas, where seven more children were born, including the sons who were destined to go on the become Arizona railroad men; two of them lost their lives on the trains.

By Rhonda L. Tintle

During the latter nineteenth century, immigrants from the Eastern and Midwestern parts of the United States, along with immigrants from around the world, invaded the homeland of Indians and took possession of over 430 million acres of land. Some of those immigrants settled in Prescott and the surrounding districts. The children of those immigrants would become the first American-style Arizonians. On the ranges in and around Prescott, harried parents struggled in cabins, shacks, and tents simply to sustain their families.

By Mona Lange McCroskey 

In January, Prescott lost one of its grand dames with the passing of ninety-year-old Alice Mackin. She was the eighth child of Irish immigrant Peter Mackin and Alvina Bennett, who herself was born in what is now "the smack dab middle" of Goldwater Lake. Peter went riding by Alvina's home, saw her shoeing a horse and took a fancy to her because she was able to do such things; they married in 1902. Alice was born in 1916 and lived at Groom Creek in a house that was also a bar and stage stop (the house is still in the family).

By Pat Atchison 

Memorial Day, or Decoration Day as it was then called, was first widely observed in the United States on May 30, 1868. The original intent was to honor the Union soldiers killed during the Civil War by decorating their gravesites.

By Parker Anderson 

Those familiar with the history of comedy in entertainment have heard legions of stories about the vaudeville circuit, which began in approximately the late 19th century and started to fade in the 1920s as motion pictures became more sophisticated. 

By Dewey E. Born 

In 1935 and 1936, Prescott had a population of about 5,000 and, like the rest of the country, was in the middle of the great depression. The surprising thing is that this small town had some 25 grocery stores. They varied from the national chain stores to small family stores, but they all seemed to make a profit.

By Terry Munderloh

Arizona's first governor journeyed through Central Arizona in the 1860s. Letters written by members of the expedition mention Fossil Creek by name and commented on abundant "petrifactions" in one of the streams they crossed. Fossil Creek is identified on maps dating from the 1860s.

By Stan Brown 

In 1912, the Santa Fe Railroad built a spur line through the Perkins ranch from Clarkdale to Drake. This greatly facilitated the shipping of the Perkin's cattle and the depot, not far from the ranch house, was called Perkinsville. In the same year, the railroad had secured an easement across the Marion Perkins's ranch and created Perkinsville as a watering station.