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A Flat Little Town
This is the town 24-year-old John Plesant Gray wrote about in his diary on his way to Tombstone from San Francisco in June 1880.
Father Owen da Silva
Father Owen was born Bill Silva on August 6. 1906, in Santa Barbara, California, near the old Franciscan Mission there. His Portuguese father and Irish mother were devout Catholics, and […]
Death on Sacramento Hill
A Bucyrus steam shovel, a modern piece of equipment, symbolized a new style of mining in the copper camp – Phelps Dodge had just begun open-cut mining operations on Sacramento […]
A Man of Strong Opinions
Charles Moses Strauss was born in New York City on April 15, 1840, was educated in Boston in both public and Hebrew schools and lived in Ohio, Massachusetts and Tennessee […]
The Big Snow of ’49
This is Andy Matson of Pinewood Dairy standing by his truck in Flagstaff trying to make a delivery. It is February 1949 and the white wall behind him and his […]
The Man from Scotland
In 1881, Henry Lesinsky, one of the owners of the Arizona Copper Company in Clifton, recorded the arrival of some foreign investors, “. . . a party of Englishmen and […]
Lawman and Thief
This big and burley fellow with the hard eyes is Burt Alvord, a well-liked lawman, who midway through his career, decided better money could be made by holding up trains. […]
Roll Out the Barrel
In this photograph, a group of lawmen in Cochise County are breaking up barrels and pouring the whiskey down Tombstone’s Allen Street. During Prohibition, Cochise County Sheriff Harry Wheeler traveled […]
Teddy at Tempe Normal
Theodore Roosevelt had left office in 1909 after nearly two full terms as president. (He had succeeded the assassinated William McKinley in September of 1901). By the time of this […]
Mickey Free, Apache Scout
The body of folklore surrounding Mickey Free makes it difficult to separate fact from fancy, but a few facts are known. He disappeared from a ranch west of the Chiricahua […]
The Christmas Hatbox Baby
At dusk on Christmas Eve, 1931, Edward and Julie Stewart, on their way to Phoenix, had a flat tire and pulled off the road about 10 miles west of Superior. […]
Old St. Mary’s
St. Mary’s old adobe church – the first Catholic parish in Phoenix and in Maricopa County – stood on Monroe Street between Third and Fourth streets on the site of […]
