By Tom Collins

If you visit the Pioneer Living History Museum, just off I-17 near Anthem, one of the first structures you will see is the old “opera house,” a two-story brick building reconstructed, the museum claims, from the original bricks of Levi Bashford’s opera house in Prescott. 

The original building stood where our City Hall stands today, on the southeast corner of Cortez and Goodwin streets, opposite the Post Office.  James Howey, Prescott’s blacksmith and wagon maker reportedly constructed the Romanesque Revival building in 1875-1876 for Michael “Big Mike” Goldwater, for whom Howey had worked at the Vulture Mine near Wickenburg. Goldwater had just closed two failing mercantile stores in Phoenix and Ehrenberg, so he and his brother Joe headed for Prescott. 

By Jenny Pederson

Known today as “Arizona’s Christmas City,” Prescott has long been a community that comes together to celebrate the holidays and uses the end of one year and the transition into the next as an opportunity to make memories with family and friends.
 

The family of fifth Territorial Governor John C. Frémont arrived in Prescott in October of 1878. The family consisted of Governor Frémont, his wife Jessie Benton Frémont, daughter Lily and son Frank. Lily kept a diary while she lived in Prescott, and after celebrating the Christmas holiday, she described preparing the house for New Year’s visitors, working on sewing projects, and taking a ride with a friend and two officers from Fort Whipple. Although she retired early in the evening, her father and brother attended a party hosted by a local theatre association.  

Oral History

By Mick Woodcock

In 1863, Christmas was new to the list of celebrations for most people in the United States.  Popularized in part by the drawings of Santa Claus and Christmas by Thomas Nast for Harpers Weekly magazine, much of the tradition we know today was in place by 1863. That particular Christmas was remembered and recorded by a number of people.  No doubt the fact that this was the formation year of the Arizona Territory had much to do with it.
 

Oral History
Interviewee: Elladean (Hays) Bittner (b. 02/01/1919 – d. xx/xx/xxxx)
Interviewer:  Mona Lange McCroskey
Audio Number: 1437B
Duration:  00:43:43
Date:  April 5, 2006   
Topics Discussed:  Hays Ranch & Family History, Peeples Valley, Cattle Ranching and the Hays Cattle Company.

By Mick Woodcock

Arizonans had much to be thankful for at Christmas in 1918. The guns had fallen silent in Europe as an armistice went into effect on November 11. Soldiers had started to return home, although eight divisions had already been assigned to the army of occupation. A newspaper article from the Associated Press indicated, “Every effort will be made to give preferential passage to those soldiers eager to return home at once.”
 

By Ricky Erway

Last week’s Days Past article detailed the Sitgreaves expedition which mapped the route the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad and Route 66 ultimately followed across Arizona to Kingman.  This article focuses on an important role on most expeditions, the illustrator, and on the most notable Arizona expeditionary illustrator, Richard H. Kern -- who offered the world its first glimpses of central Arizona. 
 

By Bob Harner

By the time the Sitgreaves expedition left Zuni, they knew Simpson’s report about a new way west was incorrect. Leroux, their guide, indicated the Zuni River did not flow into the Colorado, but into the Little Colorado River instead. Leroux proposed an alternative route, following the Zuni to the Little Colorado, following that river to the Bill Williams Fork via the San Francisco Mountains, then to the Colorado and the Old Spanish Trail. Leroux was incorrect about where those rivers went, but he had never been west of present-day Winslow.
 

By Bob Harner

After the Mexican-American War, converging events made finding a southern route to the West increasingly more urgent. The 1849 California Gold Rush launched a flood of westbound travelers, most following existing northern trails from St. Louis. Winter snows made these trails dangerous or impassable. Adding to the pressure was the Army’s need to supply new western posts created following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Army Corps of Topographical Engineers was tasked with answering these needs.
 

By Tom Schmidt

Sharlot Mabridth Hall’s public life has been discussed in great detail. She is remembered as the founder of the Sharlot Hall Museum, Arizona’s first territorial historian, an advocate for Arizona statehood and preserving history, and a poet. However, Sharlot’s life at Orchard Ranch (located on today’s Highway 69 east of Prescott Valley) is the subject of this article. It was here that Sharlot lived a strenuous life as a woman rancher while caring for her parents, Adeline (Boblett) Hall and James Hall.