The Mohave Museum of History and Arts

The Mohave Museum of History and Arts first began to take form a quarter century ago in the ranch home of Mrs. John Neal. Her father, Lane Cornwall, had been one of the first cattlemen of Mohave County, and she felt she should start the collection of some history concerning this vast area in which she had grown up. Collect she did, and she found in the Daughters of Mohave County Pioneers an organization that wanted to do something about creating a building to house the history of this region. The dream began to take shape in 1961, with founding of the Mohave Pioneers Historical Society, headed by Dr. Paul V. Long as first president. The City of Kingman donated a building site on the west side of town near the Beale Monument and Chamber of Commerce Building. This spot also faces a beautiful green park with huge shade trees. That park was another product of the hard work and drive of Dr. Long several decades earlier. Then followed years of effort by the Daughters of Mohave County Pioneers to raise building funds just one more brick here and another wall there. The bricks and walls were forthcoming, and in 1966 the structure stood complete, but empty. An imposing building and a mountain of historical objects were there, waiting for someone to come along who could makefrom them a living, vivid document to tell of Man and his works in this huge land we call Mohave.

That “someone” was found working in a laboratory of the Duval copper mine in nearby Chloride. Roy Purcell was more than just a lab worker he was and is an artist of ability and imagination. As a personal project he had painted a mural of monumental scope on huge granite cliffs in the Chloride hills, but he had no background, whatever, in the creation and/or operation of a museum. Roy Purcell, himself, best describes his dilemma in these words: “The main lobby stood empty and beckoning, as though the objects stored in the back room held the key to some mysterious puzzle, a giant jigsaw puzzle. “The rock walls of Chloride had presented a challenge, but now other walls stood before me as bare canvases on which I had an opportunity to show Man's efforts to build a new life in a desert land. “It was January, 1967. I sat behind heavily soaped windows in the completed shell of a museum building and searched in faded photographs and yellowed documents for some meaning to this mass of material. “Ideas emerged, slowly and with much difficulty. Thedisplays gradually took shape in the form of a region's growth, in much the same manner that a person's growth may be depicted from infancy to old age.

The Purcell murals are a panorama of Mohave County history.

"By June the project was ready for the public. Windows were cleared of soap, doors were thrown open, and the rush began.

"Since the museum charges no admission fee, we depended entirely on volunteers to staff the building from 1 to 9 p. m., seven days a week. Many of these workers came from the ranks of the Daughters of Mohave County Pioneers, but the two-shift operation required the support of many others outside that organization. Kingman responded with great enthusiasm, as community interest and pride grew with each new page in the visitors' register.

"With an abundance of capable help I was freed to begin work on a 130-foot mural to cover the upper walls above the display cases. Using oils, auto enamels, and Byzantine glass, I assembled an unfolding panorama of Mohave County history across those walls. Included are the early seed-gathering peoples, Lt. Beale's camels, cattle, the gold camps, and the blue lakes created on Mohave County's border from the muddy Colorado River.

"One empty room remained, and it was here that I built a typical brush shelter of the Hualapai Indians and painted a 40-foot mural to tell the story of these people in the land.

I visualize this room as the first of several that can be created in the future to develop individual chapters in what I would call the Mohave County Epic. The ten display cases in the main lobby of the museum could be considered as merely a table of contents for a very exciting book that is yet to be written.

"As a final touch in preparation for the summertime rush of 1968, we have built a typical mine shaft at the west end of the building, so that this important part of Mohave County's rich history can be examined at first hand.

"I think we can now say that a dream has materialized."

I would agree. We are all proud of that which has been accomplished there on U.S. 93 at the west end of Kingman, and we salute those who have made it happen.

It is fitting that National Museum Week of 1968 should end on April 27 with the dedication of this small hometown museum in a small American city of Arizona. The main speaker, Stewart L. Udall, is a man much concerned with quality in the American life. In the Mohave Museum of History and Arts he found a stirring example of excellence that results when people of talent and determination go to work.