By Stuart Rosebrook, Executive Director, Sharlot Hall Museum

In American naval history, few ships are more honored than the Pennsylvania class of battleship, the U.S.S. Arizona. When the Arizona was christened by Prescott’s own Esther Ross in the Brooklyn Naval Yard in front of 75,000 on June 19, 1915, no one could conceive of the battleship’s fateful future; in contrast, the Arizona’s construction, along with its sister-ship Pennsylvania, was heralded as a symbol of America’s commitment to being one of the world’s most powerful militaries, a stern and strong message to its enemies in the war raging in Europe and the Atlantic.

How did 17-year-old Esther Ross, daughter of a Prescott pharmacist, become Arizona’s representative to christen the young state’s namesake battleship? She received an appointment from Governor George W. P. Hunt, but it was her father, William W. Ross, who championed his daughter’s role. “He quietly started to talk to his friends,” Esther Ross Wassell remembered in an interview with journalist Bob Thomas in 1967. “In the three years since the keel was laid he managed to get quite a backing. Gov. Hunt chose me out of hundreds of girls. Of course, like I said, my father started working on it a lot earlier than the other fathers.”