By Marguerite Madison Aronowitz

In many Prescott area locations, voices of artists from days long ago speak to us through their creations: paintings and sculptures of great beauty and imagination. For example: George Phippen's 'The Walker Party' exhibited at the library; Kate Cory's 'Migration of the Hopi Tribe in the Early 20th Century' in the First Congregational Church; and Solon Borglum's 'Sioux Indian Buffalo Dancer' on display in the Prescott Valley Civic Center. These are but a few of the many significant art pieces, executed by men and women no longer with us, that can be seen and appreciated by those willing to seek them out.

By Tom Brodersen

Sometimes "days past" leave traces that cannot be forgotten. 2001 marked the 50th anniversary of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site and many still suffer from cancer and other diseases caused by fallout from the United States atomic testing program half a century later. It may come as a surprise that Yavapai County residents are included in the official list of people affected. The areas in Arizona recognized by the government as affected by fallout are Yavapai, Coconino, Apache, Gila, and Navajo counties. One out of every seven tests dumped radioactive fallout on northern Arizona.

By Linda Ludington

Perkinsville, Arizona, 1963. The Hollywood movie cameras zoom in for closer shots. The frontier sheriff is about to confront the hardened outlaw who has just come into town on the train. The final episode of "How The West Was Won" is being filmed. The movie is fiction; the movie set is, however, real. What could be more authentic to the spirit of the West-its land, its history, its people-than Perkinsville and the Perkins family!

by William "Bill" Peck

If there is one lesson history teaches, it is how fast we forget. When I was a boy in Hillside, Arizona, the occupants denied there ever were any Indians or gold mines of significance, even though less than a man's lifetime had intervened between those most notable events. One need only venture into the hills in search of Indian artifacts, arrowheads, pottery or search the mine dumps for evidence of early workings such as old bottles, metal objects or crucibles to realize that you are much too late. Earlier visitors have denuded these places.

By Linda Ludington

(This is the second part in a two-part series on the Perkins Family) 

Annie Perkins, like her daughters-in-law later, was a resourceful ranch wife. She grew large gardens and canned fruits and vegetables throughout the summer. She also canned meat-venison and beef-and dried some beef into jerky. There was no refrigeration. Annie also made good use of her treadle sewing machine, generously sharing with her Yavapai Indian neighbors.

By Parker Anderson

One of the best known outlaws in Arizona western history, and without question the least deserving of the notoriety, is the female stagecoach robber Pearl Hart. Her story has been told countless times, with very few versions that match each other. 

According to interviews that Pearl herself gave, she was born in Ontario, Canada, and came to the American Southwest to flee an abusive husband. She moved around Colorado and other states, eventually winding up in southern Arizona, where she found work in various mining in and around Pinal County and Globe. It was 1899.

By Ken Edwards

Horrible: terrible, awful, dreadful, revolting, repulsive, disgusting, and more. What could be more entertaining for a Fourth of July celebration than a parade of "Horribles"? Not to be outdone by New Orleans' Mardi Gras, an intrepid group of prominent Prescott citizens under the direction of Messrs. W. F. Holden and John F. Meador, organized an adjunct to the annual Fourth of July festivities in downtown Prescott in 1881.

By Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright

Recently we've been hearing about the "She-DISK-y" wildfire. Radio and TV commentators new to the Southwest, and even those who've been here a long time, had not heard of this remote spot in Arizona until a devastating wild fire broke out there in June. Their guesses at pronunciation were sometimes wild and funny. Just as newly arrived newscasters have usually said "Mongolian" when talking about Arizona's Mogollon Rim Country. Of course most of us forgive them because we also mispronounced these words (if we pronounced them at all) when we first came to Arizona.

By Dr. Sandra Lynch

Early in the 1970s, the Forestry Department of Colorado State University teamed up with my department, Agricultural Economics, in a joint project with New Mexico State University. We compiled a feasibility study that recommended some Navajo and Ute Indians become Christmas tree farmers, thus providing a new industry using unemployed resources on the two reservations.

By Al Bates

A chance encounter at a Fourth of July outing in 1869 led to the adoption of an orphan Indian child and, many years later, to one of Territorial Arizona's most bitter estate settlements. Feelings over the estate settlement were so intense that at one point a rifle was fired into a room occupied by a woman and her two young children.