by Dewey E. Born

In 1935 and 1936, Prescott had a population of about 5,000 and, like the rest of the country, was in the middle of the great depression. The surprising thing is that this small town had some 25 grocery stores. They varied from the national chain stores to small family stores, but they all seemed to make a profit.

The stores were a little different from the supermarkets of today. No pharmacy. Prescriptions were filled at one of the half-dozen drug stores in town. No frozen foods either, though some stores did have a small freezer for ice cream. Fresh fruits and vegetables were available in season only. Most of the bread was local, baked by the Ideal B bakery on North Cortez. It was packaged in waxed paper decorated with designs borrowed from the Hopi. You could get any kind you wanted as long as it was white. Some stores also sold bread shipped in from Phoenix, usually Roman Meal. Both the Home Bakery on South Cortez and Brinkmeyer’s Bakery in the Brinkmeyer Hotel baked bread but it was only sold in the bakery. Milk was sold by the quart in a few stores but was not in great demand. Milk was delivered to homes by the several dairies serving Prescott. With one exception, all the stores closed on Sunday. The exception was the New China Store at 222 N. Cortez, almost at the end of the street.

If there were such a thing as an elite grocery store, it would have been the Bashford Burmister. Known locally as simply the "B & B", it was located on Gurley Street across from the Plaza in the three-story building that today is called the Bashford Court. The Bashford Burmister was Prescott’s only true department store. In 1935 it listed the following departments: dry goods, furniture, gents furnishings, hardware, meat, retail grocery, shoe, and wholesale.

William Bashford and Robert H. Burmister opened their store in the fall of 1872 as a general merchandise store. The original building was destroyed in the July 14, 1900 fire. The rebuilt store was enlarged by making it wider. The grocery department was located on the ground floor where Stolts was for many years.

The two men were very close. Robert Burmister was married to Margaret Bashford and their two homes were side by side on East Gurley Street. The Bashford home was later moved to the grounds of Sharlot Hall Museum, where it houses the Museum Store.

The meat department was in the same area as the grocery department and boasted a large refrigerator display cabinet and a walk-in refrigerator for meat storage. The grocery department carried the more expensive brands of canned foods, crackers, cookies and candy. The Bashford Burmister department store closed in 1940.

Two national grocery chains had stores in Prescott, the Piggly Wiggly and Pay’n Takit. Piggly Wiggly was located between The B & B and Montezuma Street. The store was originally owned by E.A. Kastner and even after it became the Piggly Wiggly it was still often called Kastner’s Market.

There were two Pay’n Takit stores in 1935; Store number 7 about the middle of the 100 block of N. Cortez on the east side of the street and store number 90 in the 200 block of S. Montezuma, across the street from the Salvation Army. Sometime during 1935, store number 90 closed. The Cortez street store continued to operate for several more years. The Pay’n Takit chain later became Safeway.

There were several privately owned grocery stores in Prescott. With three or more employees and well stocked shelves it was possible to complete you grocery shopping in one store. On the east side of town was Lantz Market on the north side of Sheldon Street just east of Mt. Vernon. The building is still there, home to some small business.

The three Allen brothers, Dick, Mearle, and Joe each owned a grocery store. Joe Allen’s Market was located on the corner of Gurley and Grove. Allen’s Nu Way Market was at 330 W. Gurley. The building is still there, the home of Prescott Natural Foods. The Allens had another store at 131 N. Cortez and a wholesale place next door called the Food Supply Company. These were both closed in 1936 and moved to a large brick building in the Old Ball Park called Thrifty Wholesale.

The Old Ball Park was an area of fairly level ground just north of Granite Creek. While there were no exact boundaries, it was the area east of Campbell Street and South of Comfort. There was a small grocery called the Ball Park Grocery, surrounded by big shade trees, on Prospect Ave which ran through the Old Ball Park.

Thrifty Wholesale sold in quantity. Canned goods were sold by the case or in the large institutional cans. Sugar was sold in 25 pound cloth sacks and flour in either fifty pound or hundred pound sacks. These flour sacks had print designs on them and when the flour was gone they could be made into shirts and dresses.

For those with enough money to stock up, there were some real savings buying wholesale. A can of corn might sell for seven cents but, by the case, the per-can-cost would be five cents. Ranchers were good customers since they could buy in quantity and reduce the number of trips to town. This was especially important in bad weather. The climate was both wetter and colder at this time. There were very few paved roads and none of them went to the ranches. When it rained, the roads often turned to mud and there were usually several good snowstorms each winter. At Thrift Wholesale they could load the truck with cases of canned goods, sacks of sugar and flour, a large package of yeast and a 25-pound can of lard. Let it snow!

Another large grocery, Howard’s Market, served Miller Valley. Located at the site of the long-time El Chaparral restaurant, Howard’s was the most complete food store in Miller Valley. It later became J.R. Williams Market. Christy Food Market at 437 S. Montezuma was the most complete grocery for the residents in that part of town. Christy’s store was still in operation in the early 1950s.

Several of the smaller stores specialized. The southeast corner of Willis and Cortez was occupied by the Bukove car dealership. Next door was Ploetz Grocery dealing in bulk foods. On either side of the doorway were large open containers of beans. On the right as you entered the store was a container of large white beans and another of navy beans. On the left side a container of pinto beans and one of roasted coffee beans, rice, dried peas and other bulk foods. Ploetz also carried a number of dried fruits and vegetables, applies, apricots, prunes, raisins and many others. In the fall he always had a large container of fresh cranberries and bins of nuts.

On the other side of the street at 138 N.Cortez was Black’s Market specializing in fish and poultry. While Black’s carried fresh whole chicken and in November and December fresh whole turkeys, the store was best known as a fish market. The seafood was shipped in from California by Railway Express, packed in ice in insulated containers and rushed up the street to the store, usually arriving in good condition. Sometimes, however, it was not that fresh and everyone on Cortez Street knew it.

There were two meat markets, Bishop’s Meat Market and Sandler’s Market. Bishop’s store was on Cortez Street next to the Masonic Temple. Sandler’s Market was on the north side of Gurley near Granite Street. These two stores carried more complete lines of beef, pork, and poultry than most of the other markets.

In among the bars on Whiskey Row was Sam Dreyer’s Grocery and General Store. Sam carried canned goods and "staples" such as flour, sugar, and salt. He also had a variety of other items for sale including men’s pants and shirts.

Swanson’s Grocery and Service Station was an early example of the service stations of today. Located on the corner of Hillside and Miller Valley Road, Swanson’s was primarily a service station selling gas and oil. There was also a small convenience market that served the people living in the area.

Some stores specialized by offering home delivery. My grandmother bought her groceries on line, telephone line, that is. She would make out her grocery list and then call Model Cash Grocery on South Montezuma and place her order. An hour of so later the box of groceries would be delivered to the back door, place on the kitchen table and the deliveryman would be paid.

Actually the word cash in the name was a carry over from an earlier time when many stores offered credit to their customers. With a few exceptions, this practice was discounted during the depression. Items were paid for at the checkout before leaving the store. One exception in Prescott was the Santa Fe Market. Located on Sheldon Street between Cortex and Marina, it was company store serving the employees of the Santa Fe Railroad. The store would extend credit to employees until the next payday.

There were also a number of small "mom and pop" stores. DeWitt’s Retail Grocery and Young’s Market on North Cortez, the Prescott Grocery at 126 1/2 S. Montezuma, West End Grocery at 646 W. Gurley, Yavapai Grocery on Miller Valley Road and probably several more I have missed.

This is a lot of groceries for a small town. A major factor in keeping them in business was the depression. Not everyone owned an automobile and those who did often could not afford the gas to run them. A store within walking distance would get their business.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pb146f24i1)
Reuse only by permission.

The Allen Store meat department in 1929.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(bui147p)
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Interior of Dreyer’s General Merchandise, c.1920s.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(bui178pa)
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Interior of the Brinkmeyer Bakery located in the Brinkmeyer Hotel located on Montezuma Street, c.1890s.

by Parker Anderson

Those familiar with the history of comedy in entertainment have heard legions of stories about the vaudeville circuit, which began in approximately the late 19th century and started to fade in the 1920s as motion pictures became more sophisticated.

Vaudeville performers were primarily singers and comedians, but also included animal acts, circus acts, psychic acts and the like. Many famous comedians of the 1920s and 1930s had gotten their start in vaudeville.

Vaudeville performers were pretty small-time as far as entertainment went even then, but were still very popular with the public. Most larger cities (and even small towns) had theaters that regularly booked vaudeville acts.

In Prescott, a few scattered vaudeville acts passed through in the early 20th century, but it did not have a regular vaudeville house until 1908, when an enterprising businessman named Charles Howard opened the Electric Theater on Cortez Street and proceeded to book acts from the vaudeville circuit a well as motion picture shorts seven nights a week. The Electric Theater was very popular with Prescott residents, and gave major competition for the city’s entertainment dollars to the more refined Elks Opera House, which had opened in 1905.

However, the Elks had problems of their own. In 1910, their opera house was 5 ears old, and had not been the financial boon to the lodge or to Prescott that it was expected to be. Senior Elks decided that the best course of action was to stop running the theater themselves and start leasing it to an independent manager. They took offers, and ultimately awarded the Elks Opera House lease to Charles Howard, who promptly closed his Electric Theater and moved his vaudeville acts and motion pictures up the hill to the Elks.

The Elks Opera House opened as a seven-night-per-week vaudeville house on May 24, 1910, and during the first week, rotated such acts as comedians Hall and Thaw, an acrobatic act known as The Twins, a tenor named Karl Raymond, a Spanish dancer named May Reed and an unidentified act called the Rehbols.

By today’s definitions, vaudeville was hardly sophisticated, but there were some standards. A contortionist act called the McDaniels played the Elks on June 14, 1910, and manager Howard cancelled the remainder of their run because they did not meet his entertainment standards.

Other vaudeville acts to visit Prescott during the Elks theater’s tenure as a vaudeville house included Seymour’s Dogs, a trained dog act promoted as "musical dogs, dramatic dogs, electrical dogs, and singing dogs, and the only dogs in the world playing a musical selection on chimes and singing the chorus."

Then there was Effie, the Mental Marvel, a psychic who performed for ladies only ("no horrid men admitted," hissed the Elks ads). Part of her act was to have an associate hide an inanimate object somewhere in Prescott, and then, blindfolded, she would tell the driver of her car where to go find it.

And, of course, vaudeville was overrun with comedians, and in the days before political correctness, many of them got laughs through ethnic impersonations: there were Chinese impersonators, Jewish impersonators, Greek impersonators, and, of course, blackface comedians.

By December 1912, William Mays had taken over management of the Elks Opera House, and he didn’t like the kind of acts he was seeing on his stage. So, he made a decision to stop booking vaudeville and start showing motion pictures exclusively. Elks ads in December 1912 joyfully proclaimed, "No more bum vaudeville!"

But it is a testament to the public’s enjoyment of this kind of entertainment that Prescott audiences complained loudly. By March 1913, Mays was forced to relent and start booking vaudeville again, beginning with Dolly Dimples (a horse act) and Corrigan and His Five (a trained goat act).

But the die had not been cast. Nationwide, vaudeville was slowly starting to fade, and by the mid-teens, the Elks Opera House was believed to be the only genuine vaudeville house left in Arizona. The period between 1916 and 1918 is the only term where full history of the Elks Opera House has not survived, and it was somewhere during this time that the theater scrapped vaudeville for good and became a full-time movie house with occasional quality live acts booked. A few scattered vaudeville performers would be booked as late as the 1920s, but these were not regular.

NOTE: Sharlot Hall Museum’s own Blue Rose Theater Company presents the "History of Comedy," written by Jody Drake at 7:30 p.m. April 20-21, and 26-28, 2007, as well as three special performances: 2 p.m. April 21 and 28; and 6 p.m. April 26. Tickets can be purchased in the Museum Store in the historic Bashford House on the museum campus, or call 445-3122 for more information.

(Parker Anderson is our own Elks Opera House historian and is a volunteer for the Blue Rose Theater.)

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(bub8024pa)
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The New State Theater seen here around 1910 and formerly known as The Electric Theater, opened as a vaudeville show house in 1908.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(bub8021pa)
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Photo postcard of the Elks Opera House in 1910, the year that Charles Howard closed his Electric Theater and took over operations at the Elks.

by Carol Powell

Sometime in the late 1860s, Clara S. Olmstead Howard, a widow with children, met Louis Miller, an immigrant from Germany. They met and were married in Texas, where seven more children were born, including the sons who were destined to go on the become Arizona railroad men; two of them lost their lives on the trains.

The Miller children were born in Texas, but something drew the family even further west, and by 1884, they were on their way to Arizona. The father of the family, Louis Miller, never made it to Fort Huachuca. He became a statistic in the Indian wars, being killed by marauding Apaches. The wagon train the family was traveling with left Clara and her family on their own when they couldn’t keep up. Another group of Indians found them and took them on into Phoenix. The family stayed in Phoenix for a few years, and then moved to Prescott in 1892.

Railroads came early to Prescott, then the Territorial Capitol of Arizona, beginning with the Prescott and Arizona Central Railroad. Unfortunately, the P & AC Railroad did not do very well, due to overly high rates and a poor service record. When a promised Prescott-Phoenix extension failed to materialize, the way was open for a competitor to step in. And a competitor did soon appear when, in April of 1893, the Santa Fe, Prescott, & Phoenix Railroad pulled into town. It was the first north-south Arizona line, and the "Peavine," as it was known, made a huge impact on the lives of the Millers, as well as all Prescottonians, and became one of the main employers in town. The Santa Fe was a cohesive force, giving free passes, picnics and other social events, good salaries and job opportunities to the families of the men it employed.

The Miller family took this opportunity to get a handle on the good life. Two of the brothers, William and Baldwin "Tobe" Miller, applied and were accepted as employees of the new railroad. William began his railroad career as a fireman, but he had ambition and worked his way up the hierarchy. By 1916, William had advanced; he had gone all the way up the ladder to Engineer for the Santa Fe. Both William and Baldwin Miller started working on the railroads in Prescott. While William spent the rest of his life in Arizona, Baldwin moved on to the state of Washington.

Two other Miller brothers also worked for the railroads. Otto Miller worked for the newspapers for years until he succumbed to the lure of railroad life, and by 1916 had taken a job with the Santa Fe as a repairman and later as a foreman in his shop. He was apparently good at his job, as he eventually became Chief Car Whacker for the Union Pacific in L.A., where he lived until his death.

Charles "Charley" Miller, a fourth brother, also began a railroading career in Prescott, but later moved to Washington with Baldwin. Pasco, Washington was a diversion point of the Great Northern Railroad. Charley had been an engineer but eventually became a trainmaster. Charley retired from the railroads and moved to California where he died.

Baldwin moved up the ladder on the Great Northern, but his career with G.N. was cut short. While on a train crossing a trestle at Waukee, Washington, on the line of the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railway, the Great Northern passenger #1 was detoured because of a rockslide in the Cascades and collided with a work train. The work train had been depositing gravel and was observed too late to permit the engineer to bring the train to a stop. As the engine crashed head-on into the work train, it leaped clear of the rails and Baldwin was thrown to his death. The train was immediately taken in tow by a locomotive sent to the scene. All passengers were safe when the train returned to Marshall Junction the night of October 28, 1913.

In the meantime, William Miller stayed on the Peavine until he died at the throttle of a train. William died of a heart attack July 14, 1945, while working as an engineer of a S.F.P. & P. train. He was on a regular L.A.-Phoenix passenger run near Wickenburg. The train was traveling about 55 M.P.H. with William at the helm, when his fireman noticed that William had been stricken. He apparently died instantly. The fireman took the train on to Wickenburg, while the brakeman took over the job of firing the train.

There was a fifth brother by the name of Louis Clair Miller (named after his father) who became infamous in the history of Prescott. The brothers who operated and maintained the railroads were not as famous as their outlaw brother. The rest of the Miller boys did not go down in Prescott History like their older brother, Louis C. Miller. Louis was a cohort to murder and served prison time in connection with Fleming "James" Parker, a man hanged for the murder of Lee Norris in June of 1898. But that is another story.

For more information on outlaw Louis C. Miller, search the Days Past Database on www.sharlot.org/archives.

(Carol Powell is a historian for the Olmstead-Miller families.)

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(pb033f7i114)
Reuse only by permission.

The shop force of the Santa Fe, Prescott & Phoenix Railway standing in front of Engine #16, c.1915. The railroad was a major employer in central Arizona, and provided jobs to pioneer families like the Millers.

by Mona Lange McCroskey

In January, Prescott lost one of its grand dames with the passing of ninety-year-old Alice Mackin. She was the eighth child of Irish immigrant Peter Mackin and Alvina Bennett, who herself was born in what is now "the smack dab middle" of Goldwater Lake. Peter went riding by Alvina’s home, saw her shoeing a horse and took a fancy to her because she was able to do such things; they married in 1902. Alice was born in 1916 and lived at Groom Creek in a house that was also a bar and stage stop (the house is still in the family). Her father was killed in a freighting accident when she was only eighteen months old, leaving her mother to raise the family of eight children.

Alice’s childhood memories are delightful! Fortunately, she shared some of them in an oral history interview. One of her first recollections was of a Chinese cook named Sing, with a long queue, who worked in the bar at Groom Creek and made great, huge oatmeal cookies for the Mackin children. Alvina closed the bar after Peter’s death and took in boarders who worked in mines in the nearby Bradshaw Mountains. Alice observed her mother butcher a steer, skin it and quarter it just like a man, because she had to. When she was five they moved into their "winter house" on North Montezuma Street, where BPA Associates is today. From there, Alice and some of her siblings walked to school at St. Joseph’s Academy. They crossed Granite Creek, hopping from one rock to another because there wasn’t any bridge, and climbed the long flight of stairs up the hill from McCormick Street to the Academy. Alice didn’t like school, and a friend coaxed her to read by bringing her licorice from Andres Cigar Store. As the youngest of eight, she was probably a spoiled brat, but "that’s just the way it was."

Alice much preferred the summers spent at "Mackin Acres" along Groom Creek, where she helped her mother plant a garden. She used a corn planter that dropped pieces of corn into the ground, and she carried a saltshaker to season the radishes the children pulled up from the garden and wiped on their Levis. They had horses and cattle, which her mother rounded up and branded. The Lange boys drove their P Bar cattle through their property, across the creek, and into town for shipping; in 1994 she could still hear them "hootin’ and hollerin’ the way cowboys do to keep the cattle moving."

It was great fun for the Mackin children to visit their (not very close) neighbors, the Otto Lange family. Alice described how, in preparation for the trip, they would take the wagon wheels off the wagon and soak them in the creek to make the spokes tight. "We’d load up the wagon, and away we’d go with all of us, and we’d go visit them on a Sunday afternoon." After dinner they left about three o’clock in order to get home before dark. Once in a while, the whole Groom Creek community would have a cookout across the road from Mackin Acres, where they played music and sold box lunches.

Alvin Bennett and Alice’s Uncle Grant built the dance hall in Groom Creek with a big stone fireplace, where locals provided the music on piano, violin, banjo, and whatever else was available. They danced until the wee, small hours of the morning, pausing at midnight to make coffee in a five-gallon coffee pot and share sandwiches and cakes and pies. Alice and her brothers and sisters were not permitted to go to the dances; they had to clean up the dance hall the next morning. This "was great fun, because then we got to eat any leftover sandwiches and cakes and pies and stuff."

Her mother remarried when Alice was a young girl and opened a restaurant called ‘The Coffee Cup Café’ on Montezuma Street. Alice received a liberal social education in downtown Prescott as a little girl and later, as a bartender. The restaurant was next to Bozarth’s Butcher Shop, and above it was "a house of ill repute, like many of ‘em in Prescott," called the Annex Rooms. Alice tarried on the plaza and listened to the broadcasts of the World Series, and she never took her lunch to school because she could eat whatever she wanted at her mother’s restaurant. She thought she was "a really hot stuff little girl" when she went in to the elegant new Hassayampa Hotel and got her hair cut in a Dutch bob. (Somebody in the family always had their foot in the door at the Hassayampa: in the 1970s, Alice tended bar; one of her husbands was a bellhop there for years; her brother Les was working there when he met his wife; and her sister-in-law was an operator in the beauty shop.)

Alice didn’t remember the depression as causing the Mackins a great deal of hardship; they had the restaurant and paid six hundred dollars cash for a Model "A" Ford in 1930. Her mother often spent half the night sewing on a treadle machine by kerosene lamp, "cutting down this one’s clothes to fit the other one," but that was not just during the depression. They were never without a warm coat and the necessities of life. After the repeal of prohibition, Alice and her friends frequented Bruno’s, a drive-in on the "island" at the intersection of Miller Valley and Fair Street, which served a mug of beer and big bag of popcorn. Later she went to work bartending. She was employed at J.C. Penney’s for 43 1/2 cents an hour, and after filling in at ‘The Nite Cap’ on Christmas Eve and making forty-five dollars in tips, it was "Goodbye, J.C. Penney."

Alice lived in California for thirty years in the middle of her life before returning to her beloved Prescott. When she went out, she always stood out from the crowd with her beautiful white hair and her colorful, chic clothing, often coordinated with one holiday or another. Alice had five husbands and she led an adventurous life, but she was always the lady. Her death marks the end of a generation of Prescott pioneers; those who survive are grateful for her presence and her pride in her family. We are honored to have been there when ‘Auntie Alice’ was feted at the Mining Company in March 2007, on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday.

Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(Alice Mackin) Reuse only by permission.

Alice Mackin, 1916-2007, pictured here on May 6, 2002.