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The Finest Job God Ever Made
Thirty-one years after America’s transcontinental railroad was completed, this steam locomotive — #1673 — pictured above in a 1960s photograph — was put into service in Arizona.
Dr. J.C. Handy: Jekyll And Hyde
This photograph, more than 120 years old, is a testament to someone’s eye for composition. It’s a little work of art, really, because it implies the truth about this doctor, a Tucson icon in his day. In public life, symbolized by the light, airy buggy he used on his Samaritan rounds, he was admired, even revered. But he had another side, as dark as the shadow he stands in, and finally it kille[...]
The Capture of Augustine Chacon
The tall man at right is Augustine Chacon, a notorious criminal tracked down and captured by an Arizona Ranger in 1901. The man with him is identified simply as Chavez. Both men are in leg irons.
Shivaree
This illustration of Miss Beautiful in June appeared in a 1912 bridal advertisement for the Phelps Dodge Store in Bisbee. The ad featured such fine merchandise as onyx silk boot hose, long and short silk gloves, parasols, white and beaded bags and lingerie dresses of sheer fabrics “beautifully finished.’’
Emory meets the Pimas: All ‘honesty and virtue’
This excellent sketch of the Gila River Valley was rendered by Lieutenant (later General) William H. Emory of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, as he accompanied General Stephen Watts Kearny’s Army of the West and guide Kit Carson on the 1846 trek across the Southwest en route to California. His journal of that expedition later appeared in book form as “Notes of a Military Reconnaissa[...]
Part of Phoenix’s Restored Past: J.W. Walker Building
This is what the building on the northwest corner of Third Avenue and Washington Street looked like 70 years ago, when it was occupied by the Central Arizona Light & Power Company. Today it is home to Stickler’s Restaurant, which opened in early 2004, replacing Walker’s Café, which had been at the location since late 2001.
Flagstaff Mill Pond
The logs were hauled from nearby forests by steam locomotive, off-loaded by crane (right foreground) and floated in the mill pond of the Flagstaff lumber mill until they were selected for cutting. The tiny figure on the far edge of the pond is a mill worker choosing logs for the conveyor to the second floor of the saw mill.
Downtown Hackberry
Hackberry, 27 miles northeast of Kingman, was a center of commerce and shipping for cattlemen and miners, and later was a rest stop for motorists on Route 66.
Boomtown Schoolhouse
A silver boom in Mohave County created an instant town that by 1894 had a school, a literary society, a church, a hotel and a population of more than 1,000.
Paradise, Arizona
This is the main thoroughfare of Paradise, Arizona, photographed sometime after the turn of the century. Note the boy running toward the hotel at right, the burro grazing in the street, another tied under the tree and the collection of barrels spilling over with things unknown.
First Catholic School in the Territory
The original St. Joseph’s Academy (called the Convent School) was established in 1868 adjacent to Tucson’s old St. Augustine Cathedral. It was a thick-walled adobe building, built in the “fashion of the country’’ with earthen floors and a roof of sagebrush and cactus interfaced on pine rafters and covered with mud.
