A shoot at Sharlot Hall...

...museum, that is. Like everybody else, I say "Sharlot Hall," which is the name of the lady who founded the museum; somehow it sounds like the name of a place, but properly speaking, one should say "Sharlot Hall Museum."

The reason I was there this morning after breakfast was photographic. No, not the cool bit of old mining equipment above.

Nor the huge flywheel, made, I believe, from granite which most likely also came from an old mining or refining operation.

Not even this splendid decaying stump from a large tree that once shaded what is now the museum's parking lot. Nor the rusty corrugated roof next the museum grounds.

No, the photography in question was of these three gents in the rose garden (below), all members of the Arizona Rangers reenactment group. Purpose: illustration for a brochure to promote a new event, Prescott Heritage Days, scheduled later this year.

It was a beautiful day at the museum, and after the shoot, we admired the corn, now full of tassels. An odd landscaping plant, you might say.

However, the plants are there to honor the Corn Mother. Every year, maize is planted around the sculpture.

Local history in art

Our local downtown library is a delight for the eye; for the would-be photographer, it is a challenge and a great frustration! First, you should know that one can spend a good afternoon just locating -- and admiring -- all the art work and artifacts on display. Today I saw bronze miniatures of local statuary. Old cameras. A beautifully carved bench. A fine collection of kachinas (impossible to photograph!) A dinosaur with temporary rabbit ears and a mountain lion plus a bronze girl sitting on a garden bench.

But the over-riding theme: local history in varied media. It took three pictures as well as awkward angles to capture the huge quilt which moves from the horse-drawn cart to the computer age. This quilt is only one of several that greet visitors who arrive via the main entrance.

Another fiber arts depiction of parts of Prescott history will be found in the lower level. It appears to be an applique project.

Detail: an Indian woman.

Detail: a member of the Walker Party panning for gold.

Detail: the arrival of the railroad.

Finally, the series of mural-style paintings of high points in our history by Paul Coze. And here I must apologize to the artist. The work is mounted at the landings of a 2-storey staircase starting at the lower level and going all the way to the administrative offices at the top. Shooting angles were very awkward and lighting was difficult; as a result, I cropped in on pictures to avoid showing the amount of distortion in my final images and had to play PhotoShop games to compensate as best possible for spotty flash.

The Mountain Men -- trappers and explorers.

The gold miners.

The first Ft. Whipple -- and the Indians.

Arizona's first territorial capital.

The first rodeo.

Whiskey Row, Shady Ladies and games of chance. I do believe it's all happening at the Palace.

A town growing up enough to entice more prosperous settlers from back East.

And a garden party to celebrate the taming of the land beyond the Bradshaws. As you can see, our history is a short one -- from roughly 1840 to the present day. (And, yes, I will have other pictures from the library soon!)

Linkage: I should have made mention much earlier of the thoughtful commentary written by Lucy (Box Elder) about how Mom enjoyed reciting poems, memorized as a school girl, up until her final days. Thank you again, Lucy.

Turkey Creek Siding...

...known as Cleator since 1925. I passed through this ghost town in mid-June on the Crown King trek with the Sson. However, what brought up the subject was a sighting of a teeny 1" diameter baby horned toad that I flushed out in my garden today. I hadn't seen one of these lizards at my house in over 15 years! My mind just naturally turned to the desert. Cleator, in this case.

The town got its start in 1903 as a station on the railroad between the smelters in Mayer and the mines up 5000 feet higher in the mountains near Crown King.

James Cleator, a gold miner born on the Isle of Man, bought a partnership in the town in 1905 and became sole owner in 1915, renaming it after himself in 1925. Though he tried to peddle the town (to no avail) in 1949, he turned it over to his son Tommy who ran it until his death in the early 1990s.

The bar is currently open, with "the best beer in 20 miles." Not to mention the only beer in 20 miles.

In 2006, there were reported to be six persons living in greater Cleator, though it looked like more occupied places than that when we went through.

If you'd like to know more about Cleator, here, here and here are sites you might explore. Incidentally, Cleator even rates an entry in the Wikipedia. Below are more pictures of the local real estate.

Copper Is Hot Again!

That's the big story in today's AzRepublic business section. When Phelps Dodge and BHP closed their mines over in the Miami-Globe area of the state at the recent turn of the century, copper was selling for a mere 65 cents/pound. Thanks to big demand primarily from China, the price has risen as high as $4 and is currently at $3.25. Time to reopen some mines, say the big companies. So what does this have to do with Prescott, you might ask. Let me count the ways, starting with the simple fact that we do live in copper country.

#1. There's Bagdad (above), only 60 miles west of town, which never closed, even during the bleakest days for mining. #2. There's the Zonia, south of town in Peeples Valley east of SR89; this smaller open pit was still being maintained when we moved into the area back in the early 80s. It's changed hands a couple of times; the current Canadian owners are considering reopening.

Before I continue with speculation (#3 & #4), let's pause for a moment in Bagdad. That house-sized machine above is just one of the sights you might see if the annual mine tour is offered this year. Take a careful look at the open pit at the top of this page; you'll see tiny vehicles on the roads; they are the size of this behemouth! If you don't get the opportunity to visit the mine, go to this site for a picture tour (BTW, it's the source for the picture above.)

How serious is mining in Yavapai County? Answer: the ad above ran in today's Courier; I've seen help wanted ads for Bagdad several Sundays. And these just happen to be probably the best paying jobs in the county for skilled workers.

But I said I'd speculate. PD owns more than the Bagdad mine complex. Remember Jerome, #3? As far as I've heard, the huge mining company has never relinquished ownership of the mine(s) or the entire town, for that matter. I'm sure that this is not for sentimental reasons.

And #4? Well, Copper Basin Road is named that for a reason. Travel the road west over the ridge and you're right there, in the Copper Basin. Also owned by PD; in fact, this is where Phelps Dodge got its start. Back in the early 80s, there was more than a bit of a kerfluffle when PD and the Forest Service proposed a land trade which would have upped PD's local holdings. The trade didn't happen. Instead of a compact open-pit, out-of-sight eyesore offering hi-pay jobs, we've lost thousands of square miles to development and gained who knows how many bottom-of-the-barrel retail "positions." But that property is still in PD's hands; who knows what the future will bring.

Note: To learn more about mining in Yavapai County, here are some sites to visit. Sharlot Hall Museum has an archive of mining photographs as well as an article about the history of Bagdad. Another collection of info about Bagdad is here. A quick review of Jerome history will be found at this site. And The Google sent me to Amazon for a book, After the Boom in Tombstone and Jerome.

Local Link of the Day

I'm still bogged down in data base misery, so a quickie (and goodie) for the day. In his spare time, Mike Brown posts great pictures to his photo blog, most taken in these parts. If you visit his site, be sure to click on the notes button to find out more. Even better for local visitors to his site, another button brings up a map. The picture at this link is of the old smelter at Humbolt, BTW. I would be tempted to take a lot of pictures there, too!

A More Muscular Past

I haven't figured out just how to respond to Anonymous who wrote about a growing crime problem in the Prescott area (below, among comments on the Hatemobile.) He/she deserves a thoughtful answer; I'll try but it has never been my intent to produce a political or news blog; the Internet is awash in those (though perhaps we need a blog dedicated to local politics. Any volunteers out there?)

However, the poster's remarks certainly reminded me that the Prescott area wasn't always as comfy and laid back as we now take for granted. The beefy cast iron mining and smelting machines in the Sharlot Hall parking lot date from a time that makes our crime situation look puny.

Hard, dangerous work. Hard living. Hard drinking, gambling and whoring. That's the world represented by this heavy iron.

Chicago: Civilization. Industry. One of the machines was made there by the Gates Iron Works in maybe the late 1870s or early 80s. A long haul west to the mountains.

Where the contrast and struggle between the wild and the civilizing forces was major.

Local Link of the Day: Yavapai Mining Claims

, oAn environmental group has released a new report on mining claims registered in Arizona since 2002. Says the report:

Driven by increased metal prices and aided by outdated federal law, in the last four years mining interests have staked claim to more public land in Arizona than the Saguaro and Petrified Forest national parks combined, according to a three-month Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis of millions of federal records.

Between January 2003 and September 2006, mining interests registered claims with the Bureau of Land Management for 208,000 acres of public land in the state. The number of claims increased by 32 percent, from 24,856 to 32,868. (See Fig. 1) Added to existing claims, mining interests now control more than 862,000 acres of public land in Arizona — about 1,350 square miles.

If you want to get a look at who's claiming what where, go to the site of the EWG and click on "Wickenburg", which will bring up the map that covers the Prescott National Forest all the way south past I-10. I was actually surprised by the results I got when I clicked on individual claim marks on the map. Didn't turn up any Phelps-Dodge claims in the PNF. It looks like the Roadrunner Prospectors Club down in Phoenix holds more claims in our area than PD! That's a big change from the old days (1980s) when my husband and I checked the county records to find that the copper mining giant held mining claims on a lot of the PNF on both sides of SR89 south of Prescott. Most of their mining interests in Yavapai right now seem to be confined to the area around Bagdad where PD runs the county's only operating mine.

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Just FYI, one of Walking Prescott's posts (Insects & Arachnids) was listed in the most recent Circus of the Spineless