By Bradley G. Courtney

If any early Prescott saloon was cursed, it was Cortez Street’s Keystone Saloon, located north of the Plaza on the west side of that street. Its first proprietor, Gotlieb Urfer, came to America from Switzerland before the Civil War. He arrived in Prescott in 1874, opened a lodging house on Cortez in 1877, and eventually added a saloon, naming it the Keystone Saloon and Lodging House. He married Ellen Dunn of Ireland in 1878.

On Wednesday, December 16, 1885—one day before his fiftieth birthday—Urfer was found lying senseless on the floor behind the Keystone’s bar, bleeding profusely from a bullet wound to his head. According to a December 18, 1885, Courier report, a lodger sprinted into the saloon after hearing a gunshot and saw Urfer with “a great ghastly hole in the right side of his head, from which his brains and blood were oozing.” Several others  nearby also ran in. They saw the bleeding Urfer and “near his right hand, lay a pistol of the bull-dog pattern.” All concluded this was suicide.

Why would Urfer kill himself? Urfer had been enthusiastically preparing for a grand celebration to be held in the Keystone. A few days before his death, the Courier announced: “Gotlieb Urfer, the genial host of a saloon, will celebrate his fiftieth birthday on Thursday, December 17th, and feels so jolly that he wants all his friends to call and partake of a lunch which he will spread.”

On December 16, moments before the fatal shot was heard, he’d been preparing for the next day’s feast. Mrs. Urfer had stepped out a short time before. With him was George Hook, who Urfer asked to run out to buy eggs. Less than five minutes later, Urfer was lying on the floor of the Keystone in a pool of his own blood.

John McCarron handled Urfer’s estate and took over the Keystone. A year-and-a-half later, another unspeakable episode with too much déjà vu occurred. On Saturday July 9, 1887, around 2 p.m., the crack of a gun was again heard from the saloon. Seconds later another shot. On July 13, 1887, the Weekly Journal-Miner reported that passersby on Cortez ran in to see McCarron dying on the floor “with a ghastly hole in his right temple, from which his brains and life’s blood lay fast oozing,” less than ten feet from where Urfer shot himself a year-and-a-half before.

Oscar Vanderbilt was first on the scene. He rushed to get medical help. Five minutes after sending a bullet into his brain, McCarron took his last breath.

The note McCarron left behind was shocking and telling, undoubtedly explaining why Urfer had killed himself earlier.

A friend named McIntyre reported that McCarron had recently been drinking heavily. During one conversation, a drunken McCarron pulled a pistol from his pocket and, according to the July 13 Miner, said “it will be my doom.”

On Saturday July 9, McIntyre overheard McCarron asking his wife to accompany him on a buggy ride. She declined.

Shortly after McIntyre left, McCarron walked into his saloon with his revolver. The path of his first shot missed widely. The second shot blasted through McCarron’s skull.

McCarron’s death, like Urfer’s, was ruled a suicide. The oddities continued when McCarron’s body was buried next to Urfer’s in Prescott’s Citizens Cemetery.

Why would two men shoot themselves in the head within a span of nineteen months in the same saloon and spot? To learn why, come listen to Brad Courtney’s presentation at the 22nd Annual Western Symposium, presented by the Prescott Corral of Westerners, July 26, 11:30 am, at the Phippen Museum of Western Art. More information at prescottcorral.org/symposium/. But there is even more to the story. The Keystone’s curse would resurface, horrifically, eight years later.

“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.archives.sharlothallmuseum.org/articles/days-past-articles/1. The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles and inquiries to dayspast@sharlothallmuseum.org Please contact SHM Research Center reference desk at 928-277-2003, or via email at archivesrequest@sharlothallmuseum.org for information or assistance with photo requests.