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 before moving west in hopes of curing his tuberculosis. While ...
Read More »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 customers is a huge snow bank. From December 22, 1948, ...
Read More »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 Scotchmen (sic) came our way. They had bought some mines ...
Read More »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. Not much is known about Burt Alvord’s origins. His parents ...
Read More »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 all over his county trying to put an end to ...
Read More »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 photo, he and his handpicked successor, the 300-pound William Howard ...
Read More »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 Mountains when was about 12 years old and was either ...
Read More »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. While Edward fixed the flat, Julie wandered into the desert. ...
Read More »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 the present St. Mary’s Basilica, and marked the culmination of ...
Read More »ASC Becomes a University 
The work crew in this photograph is taking down the old name – Arizona State College – and putting up the new – Northern Arizona University – on NAU’s campus April 29, 1966. It was the last name change for ...
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