HISTORY6 - Prescott, Everybody's Hometown

Pat and I will be visiting Prescott in October to participate in an Arizona Highways photoshoot class.  Even though we’ve been to Prescott many times in the past, I wanted to know more about the history of the town this time.

Prescott (apparently pronounced “press-kit” by natives and “press-cot” by others) is a town of around 45 thousand people, located in the Bradshaw Mountains of north central Arizona at an elevation of 5,400 feet.  Prescott’s history includes that of Native Americans, who have lived in the Prescott area for hundreds of years, the town’s founding as a gold mining camp by white settlers in the 1860s, years as capital of the Arizona Territory, growth after Arizona statehood to become a tourist and recreation destination, and determined efforts to preserve its history and architecture.

This modern street map of downtown Prescott highlights Montezuma and Gurley Streets, the center of the town's history.

Native Americans

The Yavapai have occupied west central Arizona since about the year 1300.  Archeologists believe (my interpretation) that the Yavapai developed from (possibly a mix of) earlier prehistoric civilizations:  the Patayan civilization, groups of whom, migrated east from the Colorado River region, and/or the Sinagua culture, which developed in central Arizona, particularly in the Verde Valley, to the east of Prescott - these two components emerging as the Prescott Culture and finally the Yavapai.  Remains of Sinagua pit houses and Prescott culture pueblos have been found in the Prescott area.

The Yavapai were mobile hunter-gatherers, traveling seasonal routes to different areas to follow game and the ripening of edible plants.  Primary animals hunted were deer, rabbit, jackrabbit, quail, and woodrat.  The main plant food gathered included walnuts, juniper berries, acorns, sunflower seeds, manzanita berries and apples, hackberries, and the greens of several plants.  Some groups supplemented this diet with small-scale cultivation of maize, squash, and beans.

The Yavapai lived in brush shelter dwellings.  In summer, the huts were simple lean-tos without walls.  During the winter, they built closed huts of ocotillo branches or other wood, covered with animal skins, grasses, bark, and/or dirt.  They also sought shelter in caves or abandoned pueblos to escape the cold.

Discovery of Gold

In the spring of 1863, with the U.S. engaged in the Civil War, the Joseph Walker party, coming east from the depleting California gold fields, discovered gold in Lynx Creek, in the Agua Fria River Basin, a few miles southeast of present day Prescott, on traditional Yavapai lands.  Word spread quickly and soon there were mining camps of hundreds of prospectors along all the creeks in the area, in what collectively became the Big Bug Mining District.

Historic events followed quickly from the discovery of gold.  In December 1863, Fort Whipple, a U.S. Army post, was founded a few miles north of the future site of Prescott, to ensure that the new gold discoveries remained in the Union and to protect the new miners from the Yavapai who resisted the miners’ efforts.  The Fort was named after Civil War Union General Amiel Weeks Whipple.  The Army post immediately became the (temporary) Arizona Territorial capital in the brand new Arizona Territory that U.S. president Abraham Lincoln had just created on February 24, 1863. 

Territorial Prescott

Desiring to populate the new gold-rich territory, Arizona Territorial Governor John Noble Goodwin selected a site for a new town, on the east side of Granite Creek, near a number of mining camps.  In May 1864 the new town was officially named Prescott, in honor of then popular historian William H. Prescott.  By July 1864, a total of 232 lots had been sold within the new community.  Also, in 1864, Fort Whipple was moved to Prescott, the town of Prescott was designated as the Arizona’s Territorial capital, and a Territorial Governor’s mansion was constructed.  The slowly growing town was incorporated in 1881.

The old Governor's Mansion - the first Arizona Territory capital, now part of the Sharlot Hall Museum.

Prescott served as the capital of Arizona Territory until November 1, 1867, when the capital was moved to Tucson by act of the 4^th Arizona Territorial Legislature. The capital was returned to Prescott in 1877 by the 9^th Arizona Territorial Legislature. The capital was finally moved to Phoenix to stay on February 4, 1889, by the 15^th Arizona Territorial Legislature. 

Meanwhile the Yavapai had started forcibly resisting the miners’ and settlers’ incursion on their lands - and paid a terrible price.  From early 1864 to early 1875, the Yavapai sporadically raided ranches that supplied cattle to Prescott, and attacked wagon trains and stagecoaches.  Fort Whipple soldiers responded (sometims preemptively) with brutal attacks on Yavapai villages, with Governor Goodwin proclaiming that “Indians in that territory are hostile, and all … men large enough to bear arms who may be encountered in Arizona will be slain whenever met, unless they give themselves up as prisoners.”  In February 1875, the remaining Yavapai were relocated from Prescott to the San Carlos Indian Reservation in the White Mountains in east central Arizona.

The 1880s saw fluctuations in the economic condition of Prescott due to slumps in mining activity.  Several businesses closed.  But, the community was strong enough to recover economically based on the rapid growth of the cattle industry.  In 1884 Prescott got its first water system.  A stone dam was built across Granite Creek to impound the runoff from the mountains.  The year 1884 also saw the founding of the Prescott Volunteer Fire Department.

The balance of Arizona’s territorial years, until statehood in 1912, may have been the most dynamic in Prescott’s history.  Mining and economic activity picked up with the arrival of the railroad that made transportation - of equipment, minerals, and people - easier and less expensive.  The railroad connection to northern Arizona’s transcontinental route of the Atlantic and Pacific was completed in 1886, with the connection to Arizona’s southern transcontinental route of the Southern Pacific completed in 1895.  Access to the railroad bolstered the mercantile sector of the local economy and led to the establishment of several new dry goods, retail, and mining supply businesses. 

Communication and utilities improved along with transportation.  An electric light plant was built in 1889 and the telephone arrived shortly thereafter.

The town square, Courthouse Plaza, south of Gurley, between Montezuma and Cortez, was the busy center of business and pleasure.  The stretch of Montezuma Street along the western side of the Courthouse Plaza was becoming known as Whiskey Row, home of over 40 saloons.  Chinatown was centered along Granite Street, adjacent to Granite Creek.  Major retail outlets, such as the Bashford-Burmister Company and the mercantile enterprise of the Goldwater brothers, were going strong. 

It took two years to complete the two-story brick Goldwater building, opening in 1877 with 3,600 square feet of sales space.

Prescott's Victorian-style Brinkmeyer House, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1897, a dilapidated Fort Whipple, scheduled for deactivation, was briefly utilized to collect troops for the Spanish-American War.  Following that, the Fort was inactive until 1905 when new buildings were constructed for four companies of soldiers that occupied the Fort until Arizona statehood in 1912; the Fort was deactivated again in 1913.

Commercial development of Prescott was altered dramatically on July 14, 1900 when a disastrous fire destroyed four and a half blocks of downtown Prescott.  Twelve hotels and 20 mercantile establishments were lost.  The town was rebuilt quickly, replacing the old wooden buildings with more permanent concrete, brick, and stone buildings.

The fire of 1900 also marked a transition in Prescott residential architecture from exuberant Victorian styles to more staid Craftsman, Classical Bungalow, Vernacular, and Revival styles.  The fire also seemed to stimulate a variety of social and public improvements.  Downtown, cement sidewalks and paved streets replaced the dusty thoroughfares of the 1800s.

In 1909 The Arizona Pioneers’ Home, a continuing care retirement home, operated and funded by the state of Arizona, was established in Prescott.  Originally intended only for male Territorial pioneers, the home was opened to women in 1916.  Later, in 1929 the home again expanded to include Arizona’s Hospital for Disabled Miners.  Today the Home’s total capacity is 155 residents.

Prescott continued to prosper and develop as Arizona’s Territorial period drew to a close.  By 1910 the town’s population had reached about 5,000 people.

Post-Statehood Prescott

Arizona became a state on February 14, 1912, and Prescott was soon busy preparing for World War I.  Mining in the Prescott district expanded to supply needed war materials and included gold, silver, lead, and copper.  The World War I era saw the greatest production from the district; several smelters were built to service the mines.  However, the post-war drop in metal prices caused many mines to close.

In 1918 during World War I, the Army reactivated Fort Whipple as a hospital for respiratory illnesses, many with tuberculosis and soldiers injured by gas warfare in the European trenches.  The Fort was expanded to 22 buildings and 900 beds.  After the war, the property was transferred to the U.S. Public Health Service, and in 1931, to the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Prescott.

People from outside Prescott began discovering the small town’s wonderful climate and pine-topped mountain scenery.  Many families from Phoenix would stay in summer homes in or around town.  Prescott was becoming a tourist destination.

In 1927 Prescott’s famous Hassayampa Inn opened, an eclectic mix of Spanish Colonial Revival and Italianate exterior architecture, rendered in red brick, trimmed in white, and topped by a bell tower. Known as the “The Crown Jewel of Prescott,” the hotel was designed by southwestern architect Henry Trost.  The Inn was completely renovated and restored in 1985 and remains a prominent facet of community life today.

Prescott's popular Hassayampa Inn, shown just after opening in 1927.

In 1928, Sharlot Hall, a resident of Prescott since 1882, a very successful writer, the first Arizona woman to hold Territorial office (as Territorial Historian in 1909), and an associate editor of Out West magazine, opened an Arizona history museum in the old Territorial Governor’s Mansion.  Since then, the museum has expanded to 11 buildings spread out on four acres and remains one of the West’s heralded history museums.  Other museums of Arizona history in Prescott today include the Phippen Museum (western art), the Smoki Museum (indigenous southwest cultures), and the Fort Whipple Museum

In 1935, after years of community pressure, the U.S. government designated 75 acres of the former Fort Whipple, on the north edge to town, as a reservation for the Yaqui-Prescott tribe.  Continued pressure from the tribe resulted in an additional 1,320 acres being added in 1956.  Today, about 200 people are enrolled in the tribe.

Prescott struggled economically in depressions between World Wars I and II.  There was very little building during World War II.  By the end of the war in 1945, Prescott’s population had reached only about 6,000, with no significant growth for 35 years.

However, starting in 1946, there was a significant increase in both residential and commercial building reflecting the nationwide boom in growth in home ownership for the middle class.  A municipal airport, Ernest A. Love Field, seven miles north of Prescott, named for World War I Army Air Service First Lieutenant Ernest A. Love, has been providing airline service to Prescott since 1947.  Prescott’s significant growth occurred in the 1970s and 1980s, the population reaching 26,000 by 1990.  Since 1990, Prescott has continued steady growth to its present population near 45,000.  Three nearby smaller towns - Prescott Valley, Chino Valley, and Dewey-Hummboldt - have developed along with Prescott to reach a total population for the “Quad City” area of over 100,000.

In 1954 the old Volunteer Fire Department was overhauled and streamlined, merging fire companies, reorganized to provide some paid positions for officers and engineers, and renamed the Prescott Fire Department.  The Fire Department received national attention and grief in 2013 when 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, part of the Prescott Fire Department, lost their lives on June 30, 2013 when fighting the Yarnell Hill fire south of Prescott.  Today the Fire Department serves Prescott from five fire stations with full paramedic capability.

Prescott is the home of Prescott College, a small liberal arts college that emphasizes environment and social justice, established in 1966 on 200 acres just west of the downtown area.  It is a non-profit organization that has an undergraduate body of roughly 1,200 students.  Other colleges in Prescott now include campuses for Yavapai College, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Northern Arizona University, and Old Dominion University.

In recent years, Prescott has become an addiction recovery destination, and a significant industry has grown up, consisting of several recovery and rehab centers, a detoxification clinic, and dozens of halfway houses and sober living homes.

Prescott offer several scenic and recreation opportunities.  Looking from downtown Prescott, the mountain profile is dominated by Thumb Butte to the west and Granite Mountain to the northwest - both popular hiking destinations.  Just north of the town is Granite Dells, often called “The Dells,” that is famous for its large boulder outcroppings of granite that have eroded into a spectacular bumpy features.  Within The Dells are Watson and Willow Lakes, two small man-made reservoirs, and many miles of hiking trails.  Natural lakes include Lynx, Granite, and Goldwater Lakes, the latter located by Goldwater Park, four miles south of downtown, a popular destination for park recreation and picnic facilities.  In addition, there are four golf courses located within Prescott’s city limits.

Prescott has gone to extraordinary efforts over the years to preserve it unique history and has an astounding 809 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including the aforementioned Old Governor’s Mansion, the Arizona Pioneer Home, the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Hassayampa Hotel, and the Courthouse Plaza Historic District, containing 26 buildings from historic Whiskey Row.

Prescott’s slogan is “Everybody’s Hometown,” because as the marketing brochures say, “almost everyone, no matter where they grew up, can find something here that reminds them of their hometown.”  Known today for its laid-back cowboy culture, Prescott has an abundance of local shops and restaurants that line the historic streets downtown and many beautiful Victorian homes in the residential areas - a combination that sets it apart from most other cities.

In keeping with it western and cowboy feel, Prescott hosts annual events such as Frontier Days, The World’s Oldest Rodeo (1888), a Navajo Rug Auction, and the Cowboy Poets Gathering as well as numerous other happenings like parades, art and film festivals, and holiday celebrations.

                    Prescott today - looking west, down Gurley Street, from the Hassayampa Inn in the right foreground, and with Thumb Butte in the distance at left center.