Governor's Mansion

Mansion

A fence was put up to surround the property. Now everything within, as far as possible, is in keeping with the atmosphere of pioneering times.

As you step from the walk onto the veranda of the old state house you notice a modern touch in the push button beside the ancient door. You push it and wait. Finally a look inside reveals household furnishings, clothing, kitchen utensils, tools each item telling a part of the story of frontier life.

One of the most interesting pieces to people who like the smell of ink is a small cast-iron hand press. It was at Camp Verde in early 70's when United States soldiers were stationed there. On it some of the first sketches of Captain Charles King were printed. His writings and books are now sought after and valued by students of early Arizona.

A cumbersome, much elongated fly rod hanging over the doorway of one of the rooms will be of special interest to anglers. Real piscatorial experts will recognize it as being English make. It was brought into this country in the 70's by two army officers and when they were transferred to another Indian fighting post they gave it to the Sharlot Hall collection which is housed here.

Rifles and revolvers hang in rows on the wall. Each has a story an Indian fight, a gun duel or perhaps a blighted romance. You might ask about a sawed-off double barreled shotgun and learn that it rode hundreds of miles in the hands of a "shotgun man" on top of a stage. Its short wide mouthed barrels were loaded with buckshot.

How many times it roared a double-throated bellow at some bandit or yelping redskin, can only be surmised.

In the last few years the old log building has served as the background for many a Western moving picture.

Outside the building in one corner of the stockade a huge granite boulder marks the grave of Pauline Weaver. He was a picturesque explorer, trapper and trader in Arizona. He was one of the first of Eastern tourists to travel Arizona and see its beauties. In 1832 he scratched his name on the mud-wall "register" of those early sight-seers Casa Grande Ruins. Perhaps it was the fact that he was half Indian and half white that made him a capable go-between for natives and early settlers. At any rate he well deserves the final resting place that is his beside the first capitol building.

Typically Western meals can be prepared for cooking in the dutch ovens that sit on the hearth of the fireplace in the end of the room. Since its erection many's the time that "Hi Lonesome Cowboy" Camp has housed a party of revelers who wanted to go back, at least for one evening, and live and eat like the old timers did.

In a far corner of the lot is still another log cabin. One glance tells you it is genuinely old. It is Old Fort Misery, one of the first buildings ever erected in Prescott. Through its doors have passed such early-day characters as: "Bob Groom, who laid out the streets of Prescott; Edmund Wells, the author of "Argonaut Tales"; Virgin Mary, who ran a boarding house in the building.

Hardly a step from the door of Old Fort Misery is an arrastre. This Spanish-invented device is one of the first ever devised for milling gold-bearing ore. Crude as it was, hundreds of tons of rich Arizona ore were milled by arrastre in the years before better processes of recovery were developed.

There is one more building, this of modern design, within the square. It is made of rock and was built in 1934 by the CWA. There you will find more historical things of interest. One such object is a commission of first lieutenant granted to James C. Hunt in 1863 and signed by Abraham Lincoln. Another, the most valuable of the Hall Collection, is the file of newspapers, magazines and documents which tell the development of Prescott and Arizona. In them you read the birth announcement of some state builder who had already died and become a legend. There will be a true newspaper account of some incident which is in this day being passed around with all the embellishments of a pulp story.

When you finally leave the Governor's Mansion you won't be Western and human-if Arizona doesn't mean more to you.

On February fourteenth-St. Valentine's Day-Arizona celebrates her thirty-second birthday. Organized as a Territory in 1863, Arizona was admitted as the forty-eighth state in 1912. The name is derived from "Arizonac," an Indian word meaning "Little Spring." It was called Arizona by the Spaniards as early as 1763. The state flower is the white blossom of the Saguaro (giant) cactus-the state bird, the cactus wren. The motto, "Ditat Deus" significantly means "God Enriches." The area of Arizona, fifth largest state, is 113,956 square miles and it is divided into fourteen counties. Phoenix is the capital city although Prescott, Tucson and again Prescott held that honor before its permanent establishment in Phoenix. The state's population is well over 500,000-about one-tenth of which are Indians; members of fifteen tribes living on seventeen reservations. Over ninety per cent of the state's agriculture is by irrigation -the principal crops being cotton, alfalfa, small grains, sorghum, lettuce, cantaloupes, dates and citrus. Great herds of cattle and other livestock graze over the valleys. Arizona is the largest copper producing state, and is fourth among western states in gold, and silver, and seventh in lead and zinc. There are many lakes in Arizona, both natural and artificial. Lake Mead, backed by Boulder Dam, with a shoreline of over 550 miles, is the largest artificial lake in the world. The state has over thirty mountain ranges of the basin-range type ranging from 4,000 to 6,000 feet. Others are more than 11,000 feet high including the San Francisco Peaks group, 12,611 feet, highest in Arizona. There are twenty-two rivers, the most important being the Colorado. The world's four highest dams of their types are located in this state-Boulder, Roosevelt, Coolidge and Bartlett. Boulder Dam, one of the greatest engineering feats of all time, cost 120 million dollars and is the world's highest-727 feet. Arizona's climate ranges from the semi-tropical desert in the south, to the brisk temperate heights of the north. With eight national forests comprising over eleven million acres, the largest stand of virgin western yellow pine in the nation grows here. And within her bounds are sixteen national monuments and one national park the incomparable Grand Canyon.