By Marjory J. Sente
On July 23, 1898, four of prominent Phoenician Sam Dysart’s offspring—Fred, age 25; Winifred, 20; Zella, 17; and Arthur, 12—set out from Phoenix to visit the Grand Canyon. A team of two horses—Vic and Nell—pulled the wagon. Trilby, their dog, accompanied them during their seven-week sojourn.
Having just completed her junior year at Phoenix High School, Zella kept a diary of the trip, providing observations of summer in Arizona and insights into life in 1898.
The Dysart siblings reached the outskirts south of Prescott around noon on July 30. After quickly making camp, they went to town for provisions and to pick up their mail.
“We sought the latter first, as might be supposed, and were much pleased to find two good letters from Papa. We read them on the street corner, then drove to the store.” The letters were sent to them at the Prescott Post Office in care of general delivery.
Fred had visited Prescott three years prior on a trip to the Grand Canyon and noted that the town had grown considerably.
The next day, Winifred and Zella hiked to a reservoir that turned out to be dry. They, however, were rewarded with a good view of town. “There are some very pretty houses, some with large verandas with blooming house plants. In fact, there is hardly a house that cannot boast at least a few pots of geraniums. This feature of the place, together with the rolling hills, winding, grassy roads, and board sidewalks, gives the town quite an eastern appearance,” Zella observed.
Later in the day, they stopped at a local bakery (either Brinkmeyer’s Bakery or the one recently opened by a Mrs. Weldon) and experienced a mystery that none of them could explain. The prior day, Fred had visited the bakery, was waited on by the same clerk, “a lame lady with painted cheeks and a great many light bangs,” and purchased bread for five cents a loaf. When Zella asked to buy a quarter’s worth of bread, she expected to get five loaves. The clerk, however, wrapped up three loaves of bread. “Thinking she misunderstood me. I said again, that I wanted twenty-five cents’ worth, five loaves.”
“‘Three for a quarter, seven for fifty cents and fifteen for a dollar,’ she said.”
“O! Bread is cheaper than that in Phoenix.”
“‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘They sell it for five cents a loaf there. But we can’t afford to do that here because we use Kansas flour.’”
The next day, August 1, started with a visit to Whipple Barracks where Zella saw former school friend Fred Christy training to fight in the current Spanish American War. She wrote, “He talked rather gloomily, said he didn’t expect ever to see Phoenix again, but would like to see the Class of ’99 graduate next summer.” Christy was happy to be back in Phoenix by February 1899, having been mustered out of the Army, saying he volunteered to fight and not to mind garrisons.
Continuing to Point of Rocks, the siblings had a picnic lunch by Granite Creek. “There were high rocks on all sides of us, and along the banks of the rocky stream grew cherries, currants, oak, Johnny jump-ups, etc., vegetation not found in Phoenix,” Zella noted.
They then headed to Jerome Junction, reaching the Grand Canyon on August 7, and returned to Phoenix on September 9 after a side trip to the Hopi Reservation.
Find out more about the Dysarts’ trip in “Summer Sojourn to the Grand Canyon, the 1898 Diary of Zella Dysart” edited by the late Mona (Lange) McCroskey. Search for this title on the Yavapai Library Network website: www.yln.info/