By Al Bates

History is not just about dates or events, it is the story of people and how they affected events and how events affected them.  This, then, is an attempt to tell of Fort Whipple's colorful past by combining dates and events with stories of people who passed through its gates.  This is a salute to the people of Fort Whipple.  Some of them left their names as city streets or county roads, or creeks or other landmarks.  Some of them are still quite famous and others are almost entirely forgotten.  Some of them spent years at Whipple and others were just passing through. 

By Al Bates

This article is one of a series appearing in this space during this year and the next on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory's Sesquicentennial.

As Arizona Territory's first governor and his official party were slowly crossing northern New Mexico Territory (see Days Past, Dec. 15), they were following in the wake of another combined military and civilian expedition headed to the central Arizona "diggings."

By Al Bates

Charles DeBrille Poston was not the only early Arizona pioneer to be pushed aside by newcomers and changing circumstances, but he certainly was the best known-shoved aside unceremoniously and unexpectedly by others who had arrived to fill appointed territorial offices.

By Al Bates

The building known as the Governor's Mansion started as and remains the centerpiece of the Sharlot Hall Museum campus. It also is the subject of a classic piece of Prescott lore.It was long held that the request for proposals for the mansion's construction was published in the Arizona Miner in June 1864.

By David Stephen

Yavapai County Road 68 is a 46-mile unpaved back-country route that originates near Bagdad and comes to an end at Williamson Valley Road north of Prescott. Also known as Camp Wood Road, it carries a compelling legacy that interweaves Native American history and prehistory, forestry, homesteading, military campaigns, mining, ranching and tourism.

By Tom Schmidt

Although schools existed in private homes in early Prescott, the hand-hewn log cabin built at the corner of Granite and Carleton Streets in 1868 or 1869 by Samuel Curtis Rogers provided the first schoolhouse for Prescott’s children. Rogers, who helped develop and taught in California’s first rural public school district, used borrowed books and his own library to teach his students. The schoolhouse served not only as Prescott’s but also Northern Arizona’s first schoolhouse.

By Vicky Kaye

Pauline Weaver, "Prescott's First Citizen," died in 1867 while serving as a guide at Camp Verde (then Fort Lincoln), and was buried on the grounds at the fort. When the fort was decommissioned and the camp abandoned in 1891, arrangements were made to move Weaver's remains along with others to the National Cemetery in San Francisco. In the 1920s, there was a movement to bring his body back home to Prescott.

By Dr. Ken Edwards

Morris Goldwater lived in Prescott from 1876 until his death in 1939 at the age of 87. During that period, he rose to be arguably the most prominent and important man in town. In 1964, at the time of the Prescott Centennial, he was voted the City's "Man of the Century." His father, Michael, also served briefly as mayor. Morris' accomplishments are impressive. In addition to operating one of the most important stores in town, he served as mayor for a total of twenty years - over a forty-eight year period, from 1879 to 1927. He was also a bank president of Commercial Trust and Savings Bank for a number of years. He was an active Mason, and the 1907 cornerstone on the Masonic Temple on Cortez Street honors his dedication to the order.

By Dr. Ken Edwards

Brothers Michael and Joseph Goldwater (along with Michael's son, Morris) rented the newly built Howey Hall on the southeast corner of Cortez and Goodwin streets to establish their first J. Goldwater & Bro. mercantile store in Prescott in late 1876. Within three years, they were prosperous enough to build their own store on the southeast corner of Cortez and Union streets less than a block away. In 1880, Michael and Joseph dissolved their nearly three decade partnership and the store was given a new name: Michael Goldwater and Son. The son, of course, was Morris.

By Dr. Ken Edwards

Brothers Michel and Joseph Goldwater escaped from Poland during the Russian persecution of Jews and immigrated to California in 1852. Their first business venture was a saloon in Sonora. When it failed, they moved to Los Angeles where they found their niche in the mercantile business, eventually peddling their goods to the goldfields of southern Arizona Territory.