By Dale O’Dell

(All images provided were photographed by the author, © Dale O’Dell 2023. Reproduction permission granted by the photographer for use by the Prescott Daily Courier and Sharlot Hall Museum. No AI was used to write this article or in the capture and post-processing of the photos. Dale O’Dell contact information: dalesv650@gmail.com , 928-925-0374, www.dalephoto.com).

Sedona and Scottsdale are well known art destinations, but most people don’t realize the entire Southwestern United States is an art destination, including Prescott. This art isn’t in galleries. Two-hundred-plus years ago what appeared to be a vast, empty landscape revealed a treasure of ancient rock art. Petroglyphs (ancient rock carvings) and pictographs (ancient rock paintings) were found in large numbers in what is now Yavapai County and Prescott. These enigmatic artistic symbols were created hundreds, even thousands, of years ago by the possible prehistoric ancestors of what are now local indigenous tribes including, but not limited to, the Navajo, Hopi, Apache and Yavapai-Prescott. The tradition of marking on stone goes back over twenty thousand years.

By Tom Collins

Carrie Stephens, the daughter of Arizona pioneer Varney Stephens, was married off to a scoundrel and poseur named W. Claude Jones when she was just 15 years old. Her groom, 49 years old, who had been Speaker of the House of Representatives for the First Territorial Arizona Legislature, deserted her after just a few months of marriage. Unbeknownst to the Stephens family, he absconded to Hawaii, where he wormed his way into politics and married a young Hawaiian girl descended from nobility.

By Tom Collins

The story of Carrie Stephens, Arizona pioneer, illustrates the subservient position of women in the early years of Prescott’s colorful history. Ambitious businessmen sometimes used their nubile daughters as pawns in a chess game of social and economic advancement in Prescott, a village of about 400 men and only 28 women at the end of its founding year, 1864. The First Territorial Legislature, which convened in Prescott in September 1864, set the age of sexual consent at ten years old, perhaps to facilitate child marriage.

By Worcester P. Bong

In 1844 George Williams founded the first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in London, England. This organization was created to address the needs of young men who moved away from home and found themselves cut off from their religious ties. In 1851 the organization spread to the United States.

By Shannon Williams & Updated by Candice Lewis

The term Downwinder is well known in Yavapai County. Downwind radiation exposure is cited in cancer diagnoses and blamed for the deaths of long-term residents of the county.
 

During the Cold War, the U.S. built a huge nuclear arsenal. Above-ground testing began in 1951 in Nevada where over 100 nuclear bombs were detonated.  In 1958 the U.S., U.K. and USSR agreed to stop all nuclear testing. However, the U.S. detonated several above-ground nuclear devices in 1962. January 21, 1951, to October 31, 1958, and June 30, 1962, to July 31, 1962, when above-ground testing was conducted, were later designated as Downwind time periods.

By Marjory J. Sente

When Miss Agnes B. Todd opened her millinery shop in Prescott in 1910, she had a wealth of experience in the trade.  Born in Missouri in 1872 to Scottish immigrants Robert V. and Jessie N. Todd, she moved with her family sometime after 1880 to southern California. Agnes visited the Grand Canyon on August 25, 1898 and by 1900 she resided in Flagstaff and worked as a milliner. In 1902 she sold her millinery stock and went to work for Babbitt Brothers Dry Goods Store. Her tenure with Babbitt Brothers was punctuated with buying trips for the store, as well as visits to Los Angeles to see her family. In 1908 she left Flagstaff, returning to California. However, the June 25, 1909 Coconino Sun noted that Agnes had spent the past year in Boston and was passing through Flagstaff, visiting friends, on her way home to Los Angeles.

By Worcester P. Bong

Since the 1863 discovery of gold and other ores in the Bradshaw Mountains, the history of mining in central Arizona has been well-documented. Near the present-day town of Dewey-Humboldt, 18 miles southeast of Prescott, the Humboldt Smelter and two earlier smelters (Agua Fria and Val Verde) were built to crush and smelt ore. The smelting process extracts metals, such as gold, silver and copper, from ore by heating it beyond its melting point.

By Kristen Kauffman

Sixty years later the children of 1930s Prescott still remembered the elephants on Mount Vernon.

In the early 1990s, Sharlot Hall Museum interviewed several town residents about what they remembered from Prescott’s early history. Mittie Cobey, Leslie Eckhert, A.L. Favour, and Augustine “Gus” Rodarte Jr. all fondly remembered the circus. They didn’t always remember the names of the troupes that came, but all remembered the animals walking from where they were unloaded at the train depot to the circus performance grounds, the place they called “the ball park” that we now call Ken Lindley Field.

By Marjory J. Sente

On January 1, 1887, the citizens of Prescott and its leaders were jubilant. The iron horse on that New Year’s Day connected the once-isolated Arizona town with the outside world. Although the Prescott and Arizona Central Railroad (PACR) had a rocky beginning and an even rougher demise, it arrived on time.

By Mick Woodcock

Christmas Day fell on a Wednesday in 1873 in Prescott; the day dawned clear and cool. The snow of the previous week remained only on the hills, and the Weekly Arizona Miner reported that the streets were drying and navigable.

The previous weeks had seen the pages of the Weekly Arizona Miner carrying news of proposed events and advocating for others. As examples: “Prescott Sabbath School people are talking of making a Christmas tree, for the children. Go ahead. We will assist.” and “Christmas Eve would be a good time for a big dance and supper, to which the managers might summons Gen. Crook, who, owing to a retiring disposition, has never yet been in Prescott four hours, or seen one-fourth of its people. Let us be jovial, as the year is kicking the bucket.” Both were in the December 5, 1873, edition of the newspaper.