This is all there was of Payson, Arizona, in the 1920s: a dirt street, a bankers and merchants trust and a general store. The thoroughfare was the center of the tiny community and the site of the “August Doin’s,”one of the first rodeos in the West.

Payson was called Union Park when it was founded in 1882 and was a mining and livestock camp. Two years later, a post office was established, and the settlement was renamed for the chairman of the U.S. Post Office and Post Roads Committee, Sen. Louis E. Payson of Illinois.

Because of the mining activity in the area, the town was as wild and wooly as any gold rush town in California’s Mother Lode. It is said that until a proper jail was built, lawbreakers were chained to a large oak tree for safekeeping until they could be brought to trial.

The large building on the left is the Payson Commercial and Trust Co., the first stone building in town. The trust company was opened in 1921 and provided banking services for local merchants and ranchers until it failed in 1932 during the Great Depression. There was not another bank in Payson for almost 30 years. During that time, the general store and the post office provided basic banking services — cashing checks, selling money orders and holding important papers. In 1958, banking finally returned to town with the opening of a Valley National Bank branch.

The liquor business boomed in Payson before Prohibition. There wasn’t much for the local cowboys, loggers and miners to do, and a trip to town was a chance to celebrate. Local bars were the Tammany Hall, Cowboy’s Home and the cryptically named 16 to 1, which referred to the exchange rate of gold to silver used by the miners.

Even during Prohibition, liquor flowed in the area. Payson, with its good quality creek water and remote location, provided perfect conditions for whiskey production. The area was known to have some of the most active bootlegging operations in the state, and Payson Whiskey was famous from Texas to the West Coast.

The town’s remote location never stood in the way of progress. In 1908, the first telephone line was strung — from Roosevelt Dam to the Payson Commercial Store, linking it to the county seat in Globe. The line was paid for by citizens who bought stock in the Overland Company and did all the repairs on the line as well. The tiny utility prospered until the Depression struck and the stockholders were forced to turn over the line to the U.S. Forest Service.

In the early days, Payson was reachable only by dirt road, either across the top of Roosevelt Dam or northeast from Phoenix. This route was paved in 1959 becoming the Beeline Highway that connects Payson to Phoenix. The original main street still exists today near the south side of the city.

— Research by Joan Brundige-Baker. Photo courtesy Northern Arizona University Special Collections.