By Bill Lynam

Pick a clear day, bring your walking stick and gloves, a Global Positioning System (GPS) instrument, if you've got one, but it's not necessary, and head up the trail at Stricklin Park from the Butte Creek trail head. The start of the trail is on Sherwood Road, just one street west on Gurley Street past The Hassayampa Village turn off. The Cowboy's Prayer awaits you at the top of the trail.

By Mick Woodcock

On the last day of the year 1906, Frank G. Ellis, M. D. of Annapolis, Missouri, was the subject of a letter that would forever change his life. It was a form letter, much as any U. S. government form letter sent from the Office of Indian Affairs. The printing in the body of the letter was in an attractive script. The substance of the message was typed in the blank spaces at the ends of sentences. It would send the good doctor on a rail and wagon trip to one of the more remote areas of the Arizona Territory: the Colorado River Agency.

By Mona Lange McCroskey

Lillie Murphy Cook was born in a house on the corner of McCormick and Gurley Streets, where the Bashford House now stands, on April 24, 1897. At the time of her interview, in 1994, she was living just up the hill at the Arizona Pioneers' Home. Her little brothers, Lee and Lloyd Murphy, then also in their nineties, were there at the same time. In the intervening ninety-seven years, Lillie had grown up and lived in Prescott (she always said "Pres-cott") and remembered life as it was in the early twentieth century.

By Lester "Budge" Ruffner

He died on Christmas Day, 1934, when the country was in the icy grip of both the depression and the Democrats. Governor of Arizona for seven terms during his career, this remarkable achievement earned him the sobriquet "George VII."

George Wylie Paul Hunt would have been a difficult client for the political image-makers of today. In all fairness, he could not be called either physically or intellectually attractive. Pumpkin-shaped and barely literate, his standard dress was a white linen suit, wool cap and high, black, laced shoes, winter and summer.

By Charles P. Stanton and edited by Parker Anderson

(The following is reprinted from the Arizona Miner of June 18, 1879. The author, Charles P. Stanton, recently arrested and later freed from a theft charge, alleges a vast conspiracy among top Yavapai county officials to frame him for murder and/or have him killed.)

"Ed. Miner: - I beg that you will be pleased to give me space in your columns to expose a black and most infamous conspiracy concocted, plotted, and carried out with the most consummate skill and precision, by a powerful combination of unscrupulous parties, who hesitated not at all the perpetration of every enormity to fully. . .

By Charles P. Stanton and edited by Parker Anderson

(Last week, in part one, we found Stanton and Rodrigues having a discussion in the Prescott jail about the murder of Timmerman and the possibility of a conspiracy against Stanton by Law Enforcement officials.)

The following is reprinted from the Arizona Miner of June 18, 1879. The author, Charles P. Stanton, recently arrested and later freed from a theft charge, alleges a vast conspiracy among top Yavapai County officials to frame him for murder and/or have him killed.

By Mick Woodcock

If you had mentioned the name Head in Arizona before 1890, you would have been speaking of a family of two bothers that were influential in the development of the territory. Both were businessmen and politicians from Yavapai County, vitally involved in the growth and prosperity of Arizona. C. P. and William S. Head were men who cast their lot in a new land and found prosperity and a measure of notoriety with it.

By Claudette Simpson

The evening arrived, Wednesday, October 13, 1909, when President Taft's train was scheduled to stop in Prescott. Seven thousand people and one thousand children lined the gaily-decorated Cortez Street. A crowd gathered around the Santa Fe depot anxious to catch the first glimpse of the Chief Executive. At 5:38 p.m. a shout went up, "Here he comes."

By Jean Cross

Probably the most historic area in Prescott is along Granite Creek. It was this source of water which determined the location of Arizona's territorial capital in 1864. Prior to that, miners found the creek to be a source of their quest for gold. Later Robert Groom surveyed the town and established the town square on the east bank of the creek while the Governor's mansion occupied the west bank. Whiskey Row with its restaurants and saloons grew up along side of the plaza providing refreshment and entertainment to miners, cowboys and residents of the growing town. Other types of entertainment and services were provided by the people who lived 'behind the Row'.

By Marguerite Madison Aronowitz

The American Civil War took place in the years 1861 to 1865. The City of Prescott officially began as Camp Whipple in 1863. These were turbulent times in United States history, and the Arizona Territory figured prominently in military operations in the West, especially regarding the United States of America (U.S.A.) and the Confederate States of America (C.S.A.).