Prescott's Underground Secrets

Prescott Underground ARCHAEOLOGISTS FIND EVIDENCE OF A CHINESE SOCIETY AND A RED-LIGHT DISTRICT

Like all Western towns, Territorial Prescott included minorities who lived on the edge of "polite society." A small Chinese population raised and sold produce, cooked in "noodle joints" and operated laundries along Whiskey Row from the late 1860s, when they first arrived, through the Great Depression of the 1930s. Similarly, women who worked in bawdy houses seem to have been accepted as a part of the town's economy as they entertained miners, cowboys and soldiers from nearby Fort Whipple. Both the "fancy women" and the "Celestials," as newspapers called the two groups, left little record except for the occasional and usually derogatory news article. The women probably hung out their redlanterns soon after Prescott's founding in the summer of 1864. The first newspaper mention of one seems to be the April 4, 1868, Arizona Miner report of a "... shooting done by a courtesan who lives in the house of ill fame on Montezuma Street." In 1895, the Courier reported "... over one hundred female denizens of Prescott's tenderloin district," but the 1910 census counted only 30 red-light ladies. Despite restrictive laws and occasional attempts to drive them away, "soiled doves" remained a part of the town until well into the 20th century. Some of Prescott's first Chinese residents had been among the thousands of their countrymen who migrated across the West searching for employment upon completion of the transcontinental railroad. On November 27, 1869, the xenophobic Arizona Miner reflected common prejudices of the day by announcing, "Three more Chinamen arrived here. There are now four of them in this vicinity, which is quite enough." Prescott's Chinese population probably peaked about 1900. That year's census counted 229 Chinese men, four women and five children. To Euro-Americans, the Chinese were strange in looks, dress, speech

and names, and they followed unfamiliar customs and religious practices. They ate foods from their homeland, although Chinese eateries became popular adjuncts to many saloons.

In Arizona, most Chinese seem to have avoided the overt persecution they had suffered in California by working at occupations not directly competing with Anglos. Eventually they left Prescott because of economic pressures, particularly the Great Depression. The last traditional Chinese family moved to Los Angeles in the 1940s. Many of these outcasts, both the Chinese and the red-light women, lived along South Granite Street, in the block behind Whiskey Row. The Chinese joss house or community center and place of worship, was west of Granite Street near Granite Creek. “Cribs,” barely large enough for one woman and a bed, extended both ways from the street corner up Goodwin and Granite streets. Several parlor houses, including the infamous double-decker brothel, presumably employed higher status “ladies.” At least one building is marked on a map as saloon and dance hall. Gail Gardner (1892-1987), Prescott postmaster, cowboy, Dartmouth University graduate and poet, once related how his mother's friends wouldn't speak of South Granite Street. If the region had to be named, it was referred to as the “restricted zone.” Gardner and his childhood buddies were forbidden to go near the area, but rode their ponies there at every opportunity to see its residents. In 2002, a parking garage was to be built on South Granite Street. Recognizing the area's historical significance, city officials and builders hired SWCA Inc., an archaeological contracting company, to prospect the site. As background research, archaeologists consulted the Sharlot Hall Museum's archives for Sanborn fire maps, newspaper files, city directories, early photographs and other records. Originally published for insurance purposes, the Sanborn fire maps pinpoint location, material composition and sometimes the use of buildings. Archaeologists use them to identify historical foundations, wells and privies - all potential sources of artifacts.

When exploratory trenches uncovered abundant historical material, SWCA Inc. was again funded to excavate these artifact-rich sites, called "features." During 32 days of fieldwork, several thousand artifacts were recovered from cellars of burned buildings and trash-filled abandoned wells and privies. Each of these sites was numbered as a feature, and its identity was verified on a fire map.

Feature 1 was relatively old, the cellar of a wooden building burned long before Prescott's devastating fire of July 14, 1900. Feature 1's artifacts, and those of Feature 36 next to it, were notably from an early era: ceramic mineral water bottles, Minie balls from Civil War-era rifles and an 1840s medicine bottle. Since Prescott, Arizona Territory, was not founded until 1864, this last item must have arrived in some traveler's luggage. Two volunteers, Ed Sullivan and Christy Hastings, were sifting dirt that archaeologist Norm Bush was troweling into a bucket when a glimmer of gold flashed in the debris screen. "Hey, Norm," Hastings called excit-

Civil War-era rifles and an 1840s medicine bottle. Since Prescott, Arizona Territory, was not founded until 1864, this last item must have arrived in some traveler's luggage. Two volunteers, Ed Sullivan and Christy Hastings, were sifting dirt that archaeologist Norm Bush was troweling into a bucket when a glimmer of gold flashed in the debris screen. "Hey, Norm," Hastings called excitedly-edly. "You really need to see this!" Bush scrambled from the burned-out cellar to join the volunteers at the debris screen. With a paintbrush, he eased back dirt and charred wood to reveal an eight-sided floral medallion, then a hinged gold loop. "It's an earring," he said. The Three of them experienced a simultaneous shiver, as if they had seen a ghost, the faintest essence of one of South Granite Street's red-light ladies.

On the other end of the project area, archaeologists and volunteers were excavating Feature 17, another trashfilled cellar. This basement, however, had surely been a casualty of the 1900 fire. The 1890 Sanborn fire map had labeled the frame building over it simply "Chinese." The 1895 edition of the map added, "dance hall" and "saloon."

After it burned, the gaping cellar hole had been filled with fire debris and trash from the saloon and rows of "female boarding houses" that was quickly rebuilt nearby. Beneath the 1900 ashes were typical Chinese artifacts -beautifully painted dishes, graceful rice liquor bottles, glazed ginger jars and what appeared to be hollow doorknobs-the bowls of opium pipes.

Period newspapers vilified the "Chinese opium fiends," reporting that they lay stupefied in tunnels and dark cellars. Probably some Chinese opium users abused the drug, but most of them regarded it much as today's Americans view alcohol, using it openly for relaxation. In one Chinese tradition, a daughter-in-law prepared the opium pipe for her father-in-law.

Because of its large amount of broken tableware and preponderance of beef bones over pork (historic Chinese settlements usually show a strong preference for pork), Feature 17 may have been a restaurant operated by Chinese but patronized by non-Chinese as well.

usually show a strong preference for pork), Feature 17 may have been a restaurant operated by Chinese but patronized by non-Chinese as well.

Across South Granite Street from Feature 17 had been Prescott's Joss House, the Chi-nese community's religious and political center. The Arizona Miner derided it as "Mongolian Headquarters." On the bank of Granite Creek, the joss house escaped the 1900 fire as its constituents fought flying embers with wet blankets and brooms.

During the excavation, archaeologists often commented that Chinese artifacts were obvious, but wondered what material would characterize South Granite Street's other outcasts, the red-light community. This was at least partially answered by Feature 32, a trash-filled privy pit behind the foundation of the infamous double-decker, a two-story frame house midway up the block. An 1880 photograph in the Sharlot Hall Museum archives labels it as the "double-decker house of prostitution." Without refuse collection until after 1900, garbage often was dumped into the out-house pit. When the pit was full, a new hole was dug nearby and the building moved over it, with excavated dirt and stove ashes covering the old hole. After a century, the organic contents of such deposits resemble innocuous garden soil.

Archaeologists interpret past life ways from material culture, a formal name for trash. Feature 32 was a treasure trove of artifacts, most of them typical of female-dominated Victorian households. Cos-metics and grooming items included jars labeled "Thorn's Cherry Toothpaste — Patronized by the Queen," bone and ivory toothbrushes and hairbrushes, hard rub-ber combs and numerous bottles that con-tained hair dye, cologne, perfume and "Florida Water."

Less obviously feminine were some dozen half-pint amber liquor flasks and round-bottomed "Belfast" ginger ales. Some patent medicines uncovered were "Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, Kidney, Liver, and Bladder Cure," and "Dr. Birney's Catarrhal Powder," the latter packed with cocaine. A well-preserved size 7% Derby hat may be evidence of one of the double-decker's clients.

Some red-light ladies sought customers in the Whiskey Row saloons. But on South Granite Street, they worked in settings ranging from rows of the tiny wooden cribs, which also extended along west Goodwin Street, to parlor houses such as the double-decker. Presumably the work-ing women of the cribs were on the bottom rung of red-light society, and parlor-house occupants enjoyed higher status.

Another sort of structure was Feature 22, a hand-dug, stone-lined well. Near its top were whiskey bottles perhaps from 1914, when Arizona outlawed alcoholic bever-ages. Buried deeper were wine bottles from about 1900 and an Anheuser-Busch beer keg atop a blacksmith-made wheelbarrow. Archaeologists believe this well had been dug in the 1860s, abandoned and covered, then exposed by the 1900 fire and sub-sequently filled with trash. Water was encoun-tered about 12 feet down, so excavation was abandoned without learning what lay beneath that level. Through the dig, as community vol-unteers like Hastings and Sullivan diligently worked alongside pro-fessional archaeologists, the material culture of South Granite Street's outcasts was excavated, screened from fill dirt, carefully labeled and bagged. It has been added to the col-lections at the Sharlot Hall Museum, where an ongoing exhibit presents the story of Prescott's colorful outcast commu-nities that lived behind Whiskey Row.

In his former position as Sharlot Hall Museum's chief curator, Norm Tessman helped research South Granite Street, and led the crew that identified nearly 1,300 food bones (including a grizzly bear) from the features. George H.H. Huey has photographed throughout the United States and abroad, but this story was his first assignment ever in his adopted hometown of Prescott.