By Mick Woodcock

Ever wonder what Prescott was like in its early days, back before photographs were taken?  Many of us have, I'm sure, that is why it is a rare treat to discover a published account that opens the window to early days and times.

Such a window is provided by John G. Bourke in his classic On The Border With Crook, originally published in 1891.  Although twenty years after his first visit, Bourke's account is clear in its presentation and conjures up a mental image of "our town" one hundred and twenty-eight years ago.

By Ted Edmundson

This is a three-part article series. Part 2 was published November 28, 1998, and Part 3 published on December 6, 1998. However, all three parts have been combined into this article.

Part 1 - Published November 21, 1998

My first exposure to Arizona was in October, 1929.  My mother had ten kids, five girls and five boys, was quite frail, and about ready to go into TB.  Her doctor suggested that we take her to the Arizona desert.  Incidentally, she lived to be eighty-nine and dad died at the age of fifty-nine.  We should have come out here for dads health.

By William Bork

Harry Brisley, a native of London, England, came to Prescott and set up his drugstore on Whiskey Row in 1893.  He remained in business until the sale of the store to W.S. Bontag in 1925. From early on, he was a big booster of the climate, scenic beauties of the area, and of other attractions.  A native of London, where he had completed a rigorous apprenticeship, he was joined by a cousin, T. Ed Litt, a Canadian, born in Stratford, Ontario, who soon chose to move to Tucson, where he was in business at the corner of Congress and Stone in the downtown until 1949.  It appears that Brisley came to Arizona by way of Canada and many people thought both men were Canadians.  A true Canadian, E.A. Kastner, a grocer, who introduced the Piggly Wiggly Supermarket to Prescott, came here at about the same time.

By Dawn Dollard

The ultimatum was implied. "If you go to Tonto," George Brown had almost said to Angeline Brigham Mitchell.  But Angie, writing in her diary on September 5, 1880, reacted to the unspoken threat: "I merely reminded him that I promised I'd go to the most 'barbarous' country I could if he ran for anything on the ticket, and he promised not to.  He broke his share of the agreement.  George had run for, and been elected, as a Republican representative to the 11th Territorial Legislature to meet in Prescott in January 1881, and I thought Tonto would answer my purpose.

By Sandra Lynch

On October 24 and 25, all day Saturday and Sunday, Sharlot Hall Museum will host its first Prescott Indian Art Market featuring over 50 Native artists.  The idea of Indian art, as market commodity, evolved within a history both Native and American.  Long before Spain's galleons put to shore in the Caribbean, American Indians had established art markets.  Pacific shell pendants, etched by acid and wax, crossed Arizona deserts in human caravans.

By Dawn Dollard and Jean Petrie

Before there was a building on the chosen site in Arizona Territory (where the Governors Mansion stands today at the Sharlot Hall Museum), the Governor's Party camped among the pines. Atop one of the tallest trees, they raised an American flag to mark the spot where the government of the new Territory would be located.

By Elisabeth F. Ruffner

Among the first in the Goldwater family to set foot on the plaza would have been Barry Morris Goldwater's Uncle Morris, although his grandfather Michael (Big Mike, according to Barry) and his father Baron would also have traversed this heart of the town.  The family members built their first store building on Cortez Street on the east side of the plaza in 1879, after leasing Howey's Hall on the next corner south in 1877.  The store on the northeast corner of Union and Cortez was called "M. Goldwater & Son" and the family operated the business there until the death of Morris, when it became the Studio Theatre and was later demolished.

By Richard Gorby

In 1865, with Prescott only a year old, the first post office, a wood frame building on Montezuma Street, just a few feet north of Goodwin, was occupied by the Reverend Hiram Walker Read, the town's first postmaster.  After a year, with a total postal return of $23.16, the Reverend Read left in disgust, and Prescott's first post office became G.M. Holaday's Pine Tree Saloon, in 1866.

There was a government rule that a post office should not be in the same room with a saloon, so the Prescott Post Office was moved across the Plaza to Cortez Street, inside Calvin White's store, and White was made postmaster. 

By Richard Gorby

The word "post" comes from the Latin "positus", meaning "placed", because horses were put, or placed, at certain distances to transport letters (or travelers).  In the time of Julius Caesar the system was already well organized and, for the most part, worked reasonably well. 

By Jean Cross

"The scenery was wild and grand; in fact, all that I had ever dreamed of; more than that, it seemed so untrod, so fresh somehow, and I do not suppose that even now, in the day of railroads and tourists, many people have had the view of the Tonto Basin which we had one day from the top of the Mogollon Range.  I remember thinking, as we alighted from our ambulances and stood looking over the Basin, 'surely I have never seen anything to compare with this' - but, Oh! would any sane human being voluntarily go through what I have endured on this journey to look upon this wonderful scene?"