By Al Bates

This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial and the founding and establishment of Prescott as the Territory’s first capital.

When most of what is now Arizona came into the United States following the Mexican War, the area above the Gila River was an isolated, unsettled western outpost of New Mexico Territory with no separate identity and of little perceived value.  It was only after the Gadsden Purchase of land below the Gila River that the idea of a separate political entity named Arizona emerged.

By Al Bates

This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial and the founding and establishment of Prescott as the Territory’s first capital.

Before there could be a Prescott there had to be an “Arizona,” and that required both a war and a large land purchase President James K. Polk presided over the final land acquisitions that satisfied America’s “manifest destiny” making the United States a bi-coastal giant.  In his single term as president, he settled the boundaries for our Pacific Northwest by negotiation with England.  Then he created the American Southwest by setting in motion a monumental land grab from Mexico.

By Dr. Rhonda T. Davis

Users described opium as the perfect drug.  Westerners often called it the celestial drug and hailed it as a cure-all.  In small doses added to a cup of tea, opium combatted the many pains that plagued people who lived with irregular medical treatment on the frontier.  In medium doses, it was effective in easing insomnia.  Opium was used by frontier households as a tranquilizer, analgesic, to treat fatigue, depression, the ague, and malaria.  A wide range of patent medications including laudanum contained opium.

By Al Bates

This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial and the founding and establishment of Prescott as the Territory’s first capital.

By early April of 1864 Governor John Goodwin was on the road again; this time headed to southern Arizona to visit the Tucson and Tubac areas.

By Alexandra Piacenza

The Fremont House on the Sharlot Hall Museum campus stands as testimony to John C. Fremont’s service as territorial governor of Arizona, from 1878 to 1881, and the year he resided here with his wife, Jesse Benton Fremont, and their daughter Elizabeth.  The genteel interior belies the dramatic lives of its occupants, who plumbed the depths of personal drama and scaled the heights of national prominence preceding their time in Prescott.  The powerful balance struck between the adventurer and his articulate, fiercely loyal wife still reaches out from the names, dates and places of history to touch the mind and heart.

By Melissa Ruffner

March is Women’s History Month, a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society.

By Mary Melcher, Ph.D.

Women’s diaries, journals and letters provide a fascinating glimpse into the lives of Arizona’s pioneer women, their families and communities.  From reading diaries like these, we learn of Arizona women’s experiences, as well as territorial and state history.  These writings also help us understand the history of our own region.

By Al Bates

To those of us who still use newspapers—we learn from them, argue with them, line our bird cages with them—March 9, 1864, was an important day in local history for that is when the first issue of the Arizona Miner newspaper was published at Fort Whipple, then still at Del Rio Springs.

By Brad Courtney

This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial.

There are many marvelous Prescott legends that are a delight to read or hear and, of course, retell.  Some, when researched thoroughly, reveal themselves as spectacular yarns.  Others are part truth, part fable, often based on a true story, but along the way the temptation to embellish and throw in extra characters and events proved too strong to their tellers.  Perhaps some are culminations of oral history gone wild.  One endearing and enduring piece of Prescott folklore, however, is a combination of certain true, distinct, and even related events.  Such is the legend of the Quartz Rock Saloon.

By Al Bates

This article is one of a series that will appear in this space during this year on historic events relating to the Arizona Territory’s Sesquicentennial and the founding and establishment of Prescott as the territory’s first capital.

The year 1864 was to be a busy one for Arizona’s newly arrived territorial officers.  There was much to be done to establish a functioning government in what had been a sorely neglected part of New Mexico Territory.