Prescott, Arizona

“ Why, the Army officers in Arizona sleep all day and grumble about the heat all night. They have tame Apaches to do their work for them. Oh, no, you wouldn't suffer down in Arizona!"
"But how do you fellows come to be home at this time?" asked Dick.
"Homesick!" sighed Tom. "The fellows in our engineer corps are entitled to some leave. So Harry and I waited until we had enough leave piled up, and then we started back for Gridley."
"Well, it's hot on this corner," muttered Greg, "and there's an ice cream place down the block, where the electric fans are going. ”

“ The large foreign element, mainly Mexican, would lead us to expect a startling illiteracy. Few children attended any kind of school. The professions were hardly represented at all. The Territory had but one newspaper—The Arizona Miner—at Prescott, with a circulation of 280 copies; though a second paper, the Arizona Citizen, was founded at Tucson that year. No Protestant Church had yet been founded, though there had been some missionary effort. The Catholic Church was strong, and was soon able to begin founding parochial schools and convents. ”

“ At Williamson's Valley, twenty miles out from Prescott, we found one of the best agricultural and grazing districts, that we had yet seen in Arizona. There were but two or three settlers there then, though there were apparently several thousands of acres fit for farms. The hills adjacent abounded in scattered cedars and junipers, that would do for fencing and fuel, and game seemed more abundant near there, than in any place we had yet been. Quails, found everywhere in Arizona to some extent, here soon thickened up ”

“ In December an itinerant government sent out complete from Washington crossed the Arizona line and effected a formal organization. The territorial capital was first at Prescott (1863-1867) , then at Tucson (1867-1877) , again at Prescott (1877-1889) , and finally at Phoenix (since 1889) .
There have been boundary difficulties with every contiguous state or territory. The early period of American rule was extremely unsettled. The California gold discoveries and overland travel directed many prospecting adventurers to Arizona. ”

“ I told him only the exact truth when I said that I built the third house in Phoenix.
After I had started the Wickenburg restaurant came rumors that a new city was to be started in the fertile Salt River Valley, between Sacaton and Prescott, some forty or fifty miles north of the former place. Stories came that men had tilled the land of [Pg 72] the valley and had found that it would grow almost anything, as, indeed, it has since been found that any land in Arizona will do, providing the water is obtained to irrigate it. ”

“ Much of the land produces two crops in the year. The towns are all of inconsiderable size, and the whole white population of the territory, in 1870, did not amount to more than 9658. The capital is Tucson, in Pima county; and the other towns, Arizona City and Prescott. ”

“ Prescott is situated on Granite creek, one of the sources of the river, and along other tributaries, as far down as the southern end of the great valley in whose center Verde is located, there are many scattered settlements; but from that point to McDowell there are hardly a dozen houses all told. This region is most rugged and forbidding. There are no roads and few trails, and the latter are feebly marked and little used. The few permanent inhabitants of the region are mostly “cow men,” and the settlements, except at one point, are shanties known as “cow camps.” ”

“ We were now enabled to get some fresh clothing from our trunks, which were in the depths of the prairie-schooners, and all the officers' wives were glad to go into the post, where we were most kindly entertained. Fort Whipple was a very gay and hospitable post, near the town of Prescott, which was the capital city of Arizona. The country being mountainous and fertile, the place was very attractive, and I felt sorry that we were not to remain there. But I soon learned that in the army, regrets were vain. ”

“ In northern Arizona the winters are cold and the summers cool. There is no finer summer climate in the world than is found on the high plateaus and pine-topped mountains of northern Arizona. Prescott, Williams and Flagstaff have a charming summer climate, while at Yuma, Phoenix and Tucson the winter weather is simply perfect.
A mountain residence is not desirable for thin, nervous people or such as are afflicted with any organic disease. A high altitude is too stimulating for this class of patients and tends to increase nervousness and aggravates organic disease. ”

“ The public-school buildings in Prescott, Phoenix, Tucson, and Tombstone will compare very favorably with those of many of the States or Territories. Florence has nearly completed a substantial school building, and Yuma will soon begin the erection of one. The rural districts have shown an equal desire to have comfortable and attractive school buildings. This is particularly noticeable in the counties of Cochise, Graham, Apache, Yavapai, and Maricopa. The majority of the country schools are now supplied with the necessary school apparatus. ”

“ One schoolhouse was erected in Prescott, costing $17,339.30; one was built in Tucson out of private contributions costing $9,781.96. It was thought—
that very nearly 50 per cent of the children in the Territory can now read and write. Every district in which there are sufficient children is supplied with a good free school. Many schoolhouses have been erected that would do credit to the older States. Considering the short time schools have been established and the many obstacles they have had to overcome, the situation, it is thought, is very encouraging. ”

“ It is evident that the pupils who were able to follow these courses to their completion would be well prepared for real high-school work. Along with this guide went a series of suggestions to teachers on methods of teaching.
At the time covered by this report (1881 and 1882) the town situation seems to have been in general very satisfactory. In Prescott the attendance was larger than ever before; “the scholars seem to study for the sake of learning”; but there was a great drawback in the irregularity of attendance, “as is the case in all frontier towns” and others as well. ”

“ The most primitive traditions, as well as the remains of the earliest civilization, belong also to the same quarter. This latter fact, however, is considered by Orozco y Berra as itself an evidence of the migrations having been from the North, the first comers having been naturally attracted southward by a warmer climate and more fertile soil, or pushed onward in this direction by successive invasions from behind. Contradictory inferences have in like manner been drawn from the existence of Aztec remains and settlements in New Mexico and Arizona. ”

“ Sec. 1. That the road or route known as the Woolsey trail, beginning at the town of Prescott, thence continuing in a north-easterly direction a distance of twenty-five miles to the Agua Frio Ranch; from thence continuing in a southerly course to Big Bug Creek; from thence down said stream in a south-easterly course to Slate Creek; thence southerly to Black Canon or the new mines; thence continuing southerly to Bird Springs, and thence to Casa Blanca or Pima Villages—shall be declared by the passage of this act a county road, free for all intents and purposes therein required. ”

“ Often in the plateau country the dry under-air absorbs the rain as it falls; and rarely in the Hopi Country do flooded gullies “run through” to the Little Colorado. The country of the cliff-dwellers in the N.E. is desert-like. Only points high in altitude catch much rain. Mountain snows feed the Gila, the Little Colorado, and the Colorado rivers. The Colorado, apart from the Gila, draws little water from Arizona. The mountain zone W. of Prescott drains into the Colorado, and to the S. and E. into the Gila ”

“ Very early in the seventies, New Mexican cattle and sheep men spread their ranges over the mountains into the Little Colorado Valley and there were occasional camps of the Spanish-speaking people. In 1872 a mail carrier, John Walker, had built a cabin on the river, five miles below the site of St. Johns. As early as 1864 the locality had been visited by Solomon Barth, a Jewish trader, who dealt with the Indians as far eastward as Zuni and who, on burros, packed salt from the Zuni salt lake to the mining camps of the Prescott section. ”

“ McCrea says that this school was opened in 1872 by Miss Mary E. Post, of Yuma.
In 1879 Col. Hodge made a record of all the schools of the Territory. There were then public schools at Yuma and Ehrenberg, Mineral Park, Cerbat, Prescott, Williamson Valley, Verde, Walnut Creek, Walnut Grove, Chino Valley, Kirkland Valley, Peeples Valley, Wickenburg, Phoenix, Florence, Tucson, Tres Alamos (on the San Pedro) , Safford, and a few other points. There were Catholic schools at Yuma and Tucson, and Indian schools had been established by the Federal Government at San Carlos and Sacaton. ”

“ Sec. 9. The meeting to organize said company under this act shall be held at Prescott, on the first day of January, A. D. 1865, and a majority of the persons named therein shall constitute a quorum for the transaction of business, and they may make by-laws and transact any other business that may be necessary to organize this corporation.
Sec. 10. That said company shall have the exclusive right to build and maintain such part of said toll-road as may be included within the space of one mile on either side of the road ”

“ HIS LIFE The Prescotts are an ancient family as antiquity is reckoned in the United States. The first Anglo-American of that name, John Prescott, an old Cromwellian soldier, took up residence in this country about 1640, and after living awhile at Watertown, Massachusetts, made a permanent home for himself at Lancaster, then a frontier settlement. When thieving Indians plundered him, it is said that he used to put on helmet, gorget, and cuirass, and start in pursuit. Being a powerful man and stern of countenance, his terrific appearance in his armor had a salutary effect on the red men. ”

“ A green New England farm with running brooks and [Pg 68] blossoming orchards would have spelled Paradise to them, as this Persian pattern of desert did to us; beauty to the parched native of Arizona is an irrigation ditch, bordered by emerald cottonwoods.
If I tint these pages with too many sunsets, it is not from unawareness of my weakness, but because without them a description of Arizona does not describe. In the afternoon hours, between four and eight, the country wakes and glows, and has its moment, like a woman whose youth was plain but whom middle age has touched with charm and mystery. ”

“ Texas was an independent republic. California and the lands adjacent belonged to Mexico. The ownership of the vast region then vaguely known as Oregon had not been settled. Alaska was Russian territory. Between the Mississippi and the Sierras of California stretched great wastes of prairie and desert, of mountain and table-land, which now support millions of people, but which even so far-seeing a statesman as Daniel Webster then supposed would never become fit for human habitation. Communication between even the most thickly-settled States was exasperatingly infrequent. ”

“ It has a fascination that every one feels who crosses its border. Paradoxical as it may seem it is both the oldest and newest portion of our country--the oldest in ancient occupation and civilization and the newest in modern progress. In natural wonders it boasts of the Grand Canon of Arizona, the painted desert, petrified forest, meteorite mountain, natural bridge, Montezuma's well and many other marvels of nature. There are also ruins galore, the cave and cliff dwellings, crumbled pueblos, extensive acequias, painted rocks, the casa grande and old Spanish missions. ”

“ His visit to the Mexican capital was an occasion of great interest to him, and brought up freshly and vividly the story which Prescott has so well told of the Aztecs and the heroic age of Cortez. No scene in Europe is said to combine such extremes of sweetness and grandeur, of light and shade, of valley and hill, of plain and cragged highland, of land and water, of art and nature, as the valley of Mexico. There he saw the evidences of prehistoric civilization, and looked with curiosity and awe upon the towering fortress of Chapultepec, which connects the present with the ages past. ”

“ His widely recognised ability brought him wealth, so that he lived in liberal fashion, in a home whose generous appointments and cultivated ease created an atmosphere that was rare indeed in those early days, when narrow means and a crude provincialism combined to make New England life unlovely. Prescott was not only an able lawyer, the worthy compeer of Dexter, Otis, and Webster—he was a scholar by instinct, widely read, thoughtful, and liberal-minded in the best sense of the word. ”

“ The place began to revive, a good school was built, churches were established, the surrounding country was planted to wheat to furnish grain for one of the largest mills in the country, responsible men took hold of the business enterprises and today Prescott is one of the most thriving little towns in the county. The children of William Walter, having been reared in this valley, have seen all of the changes wrought in the last half-century. They have seen the wild, unbroken prairies developed to their present high state of cultivation and the eldest daughter, Mrs. ”