By Parker Anderson

The Prescott city government has put the old city hall building at the corner of Goodwin and Cortez streets up for sale. This has brought about questions concerning the history of the building and of the property itself.

In 1962 prominent Prescott historian Budge Ruffner was Chairman of the Prescott Centennial Commission, which was in charge of preparations for Prescott’s 100th anniversary two years later. With the city administration planning to build a new city hall on a then-vacant lot, Ruffner asked commission member Bert Fireman to document the history of the site.

By Barbara Patton

The first settlers in the Central Highlands of the Arizona Territory in the 1860’s were seeking gold, as was Albert Noyes, an early pioneer from Maine. He had traveled to California during the Gold Rush, but without a lot of success there, Noyes decided to try Arizona. In 1863 he arrived in Arizona where he and fellow miners established a mining district in the mountains south of present-day Prescott. Other miners asked Noyes and his friends George Lount and E.M. Smith to draw up rules for the Quartz Mountain Mining District. By February 1864, Noyes had claimed his quarter section of land where he intended to mine for gold.
 

By Bob Harner

 “The Tiger is Dying!” was a headline in Prescott’s Weekly Arizona Journal-Miner, April 3, 1907. The tiger in question was the illustration on the backs of faro cards and its demise was caused by the new Arizona anti-gambling law.

Prescott was a stop on the circuit for professional gamblers (called sporting men or sports). Some became well-known (most notably Doc Holliday, who gambled here before Tombstone), but others became historical footnotes, like ill-tempered John Wilcoxon (alias Jim Moon) who enjoyed a three-month hot streak in Prescott in the 1870’s. Prescott newspaper coverage was often ambivalent about sporting men and their presence in Whiskey Row saloons.

By Elizabeth Bourgault

Yavapai Cemetery Association (YCA), a volunteer group formed in 1995 to restore and manage Citizen’s Cemetery on E. Sheldon St. in Prescott, created an “Adopt a Grave” program in 2013. YCA worked with the public to not only “adopt” graves which the adopter would then care for, but to also purchase markers for any of the hundreds of graves without them. This effort resulted in about 125 new markers added to graves. Betty Bourgault adopted the grave of Jesse Baxter and purchased a new marker for it.
 

By Parker Anderson

On February 20, 2022, the Elks Opera House in Prescott turned 117 years old. It is perhaps the oldest operating theater in the Southwest. In its many years, the facility has had its ups and downs, but today it is considered one of the major assets of downtown Prescott.

By Worcester P. Bong

As noted in Part 1, Arizona Airways ceased operations on March 1, 1948. After that, Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc (TWA) provided the only passenger air service into Prescott. But in June 1949, CAB authorized a new interstate route between Reno, Nevada and Phoenix, Arizona for Bonanza Air Lines. CAB gave the Las Vegas-based Bonanza a three-year temporary certificate to operate this route which stopped in several cities, including Las Vegas, Nevada, and Prescott. CAB also gave Bonanza an opportunity to acquire TWA route 38 between Phoenix and Las Vegas and TWA route 2 between Phoenix and Boulder City, Nevada, if it could prove it had sufficient financial resources. By the end of the year, with support from TWA, these routes were transferred to Bonanza Air Lines.
 

By Worcester P. Bong

On March 30, 2021, a new passenger terminal opened at the Prescott Regional Airport, Ernest A. Love Field in Prescott, Arizona. As reported in the March 31, 2021, edition of the Daily Courier, the terminal represented a new era for air travel into the Prescott/Quad Cities region. Currently, United Express (operated by SkyWest Airlines) connects Prescott with daily flights to Denver and Los Angeles.
 

By Marjory J. Sente

The morning after her twelve or thirteen-hour stage ride to the Grand Canyon, Martha Burton Williamson wrote a penny postal card to her daughter Estella Williamson. The message was brief. “My Dear Estella, We are now at the camp ready to see the Grand Cañon. We arrived here at 9 P.M. yesterday. We are enjoying the trip immensely. Everything has been perfect and the trip not so hard as anticipated so far. Love to you all. Papa, Lillie, Virginia, yourself and Edward. Lovingly, Your Mama.” Martha added, “Grand Cañon, Ariz., June 9, ’95 Sunday A.M.”

By Marjory J. Sente

Martha Burton Woodhead Williamson, better known as Mrs. M. Burton Williamson, was born in England in 1843. She came to America the next year with her parents and lived in the Midwest. Well educated, she became a newspaper reporter, and in 1882, the associate editor of the Terre Haute Enterprise in Indiana.
 

In 1887 the Williamson family moved to Los Angeles, where Martha became involved in education, natural science, history and women’s rights. A prolific writer and scholar, she was a member of the Southern California Press Association. Her involvement with this organization led to her trip to the Grand Canyon.
 

By Bob Baker

Dr. Elliott Ladd Coues was truly a “Renaissance” man, serving as an Army doctor, naturalist, historian, ornithologist (study of birds) and author of numerous books in his lifetime.

Born on September 9, 1842, Elliott Ladd Coues graduated from Columbia College, Washington, D.C. in 1863. On March 30, 1864, he was commissioned an Assistant Surgeon in the U.S. Army (equivalent to First Lieutenant). In August 1864 he arrived at Fort Whipple in Prescott in the new Arizona Territory. In their book, Elliott Coues, Naturalist and Frontier Historian, Paul Russell Cutright and Michael J. Brodhead quote Coues’s letter to his mentor Spencer F. Baird, Asst. Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, describing his arrival at Fort Whipple: “I have just arrived here and assumed charge of the Hospital and I am at present busy getting official matters in order, - which will occupy me for a few days. I will then get settled in my tent, - we have nothing else to live in,- and shall try to prosecute Nat. Hist. with the same animus with which I left Washington for this country.”