By Worcester P. Bong
Between 1931 and 1950, the Veterans Administration (VA) built and renovated numerous rural hospitals, and in 1931, it acquired the old hospital/sanatorium complex on the former Fort Whipple grounds in Prescott as part of that effort. Until then, the complex served as a U.S. Army hospital and U.S. Veterans Bureau hospital.
By Susan Cypert
In songs, speeches and stories, Katie became one of the early environmental movement’s loudest and fiercest voices, along with people like Edward Abbey and his Monkey Wrench Gang and David Brower, Sierra Club founder. Her anger at the federal government, especially the “Wreck-the-Nation Bureau” (Bureau of Reclamation) fueled her music and made her a magnet for filmmakers. Many people know Katie Lee from her cameo appearance in the documentary DamNation, where she shared photos from her last trip through Glen Canyon.
By Susan Cypert
From 1954, when she first ran Glen Canyon, Katie Lee stayed on the road for the next ten years, crisscrossing America in a 1950’s Thunderbird coupe, singing in popular nightclubs and returning fifteen times to Glen Canyon, often paying her way on the trips by singing folk songs for tourists.
By Susan Cypert
She was called many things in her lifetime: blunt, foul-mouthed, blissfully profane, eloquent, free-spirited, joyful raconteur, badass, the Goddess of Glen Canyon, Kickass Katie, Grand Dame of Dam busting. A woman with grit, grace and humor. A woman who took no “s…,” liked saying “f…,” who once rode naked through Jerome on a bicycle.
By Mick Woodcock
In early Prescott, New Year’s was a minor celebration. The first mention in the Arizona Miner was December 29, 1866: “New Years Balls – Two fashionable dancing parties are to come off next Tuesday night – one at the Osborn House, and the other at the new (word unintelligible), lately fitted up at the east end of the Capitol Building.” These had an admission charge and featured food, beverages and dancing.
By Don Larry
On Prescott's courthouse plaza stands the tall, ornately canopied bandstand. It was built in 1908 on the spot where an earlier bandstand had stood for many years. The nationwide brass band movement was first introduced into Arizona here in 1865 and it quickly spread throughout the territory.
Read MoreBy Al Bates Julius and Celia Sanders spent the first 35 years of their married life uneventfully, farming in Kentucky and Illinois. The next five years were spent on a trek that took them and most of their children to California and then to Arizona to become Prescott's first Anglo family.
Read MoreBy Barbara Patton
In December 1864, Prescott, the fledgling capital of the Arizona Territory, was barely a town, laid out with a few dirt streets and trails leading into the forest and mining camps. There were probably a few hundred miners and soldiers within reach of the town, plus a few families who had moved into the settlement. Read MoreBy Mick Woodcock
In 1918, the war raging in Europe was not the only place to see the death of a Prescott man, when Robert J. Miller was shot to death by Harry Earl “Bud” Stephens at Oscar W. Bruchman’s store in Prescott on April 2, 1918. This was the conclusion of the coroner’s jury summoned by Yavapai County coroner Charles H. McLane.
By Bradley G. Courtney
The Juniper House, Prescott’s first restaurant, was founded by a multifaceted pioneer named George Barnard. A native Michigander, Barnard was one of several original Prescottonians who initially made his way west after hearing of the discovery of gold on Sutter’s Creek in California. Like several other 1849 Argonauts, he later moved to Arizona after learning of mineral strikes there.
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