Bandstand

This is a Reconstruction of the bandstand which was located near the church in Globe in 1881. It was built by Hallcraft in 1973.

Music was a favorite form of relaxation and community recreation in towns throughout Arizona. Rivalries often developed between towns over the size and quality of their bandstands and local bands, which were considered visible evidence of a town's cultural accomplishments and community pride. The bandstand also served as a center for community recreation during long summer evenings.

Brass band: "If you have melancholy or the blues, come to us, and we will give you music that will cheer you up." (The Arizona Silver Belt, August 28, 1880.)

Bank

This structure represents the 1884 Valley Bank in Phoenix, which was the first bank that was used for no other purpose than banking. Prior to this time, most banks were housed in the back of stores or the basements of hotels.

The front and contents are from the original bank built in 1884, and the vault is from the Gila Valley Bank and Trust Company. The bank is reconstructed from a drawing of the original and is furnished in the style of banks of that period.

Blacksmith Shop

This is a reconstruction of Middleton & Pascoe's shop which stood in Globe, Arizona. Our blacksmith shop is based on a photograph taken during the 1870's. The double doors at the front and back are wide enough for a team and wagon to pass through, and the floor is packed earth.

The blacksmith's profession of working wrought iron is over 3,000 years old. Originally, he was a maker of tools, hardware, and other useful and decorative iron implements. He also made horse-shoes; however, these were fitted and applied by farriers.

A blacksmith was important to 19th century life and was often called upon to repair damaged equipment, forging new pieces whenever necessary. In the early 19th century, manufactured cast iron objects began replacing those handcrafted of wrought iron, and the trade diminished. The blacksmith then assumed the farrier's duties in addition to his own. His work became mainly concerned with the shoeing of horses, carriage work and repair of implements. In the closing years of the 19th century, repair of the new fragile horseless carriages became an additional duty, and the blacksmith shop was, in reality, the original service station.

The equipment of the late 19th century blacksmith included the forge with its fire for heating metal, the bellows for forcing air through the coals and creating the desired heat, a barrel of water for quenching red hot iron, and the anvil on which the metal was pounded, shaped, and formed. However, the most important tool of the trade was the blacksmith's hammer.

Carpenter Shop

This shop is modeled after an 1880 Prescott shop. Carpenters were in demand for the construction of counters, display cases, and furniture repair as well as new buildings. Often a carpenter was also a cabinet maker, in which case he made furniture - bedsteads. wash stands, tables, chairs, etc. The tools exhibited in-the Carpenter Shop are not from the original shop but have been donated by people from all over the country.

Carpenter shops were usually surrounded by large lumber yards.

At Pioneer Arizona, we use the carpenter shop and the services of talented and skilled volunteers to repair artifacts, refurbish antique furniture for the buildings, and provide display cases and shelving--the same types of services provided by the carpenters of the 1800's.

Community Church

This church is a copy of the St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church which stood in Globe, Arizona, from 1880 through 1927. The church's painstaking and authentic reconstruction was based upon church records, original photos, newspaper clippings, personal interviews, and over 1500 hours of research. Now referred to as our Community Church, it is used for Sunday worship and is available for weddings throughout the year..

Funds to construct the church were donated by Mr. and Mrs. A. P. Tell and family through the Tell Foundation. Mr. Tell was a Phoenix industrial developer. Two of the original pews were donated to Pioneer Arizona by the First Baptist Church of Globe and copied to provide the seating now available.

The original church was torn down and the property sold to Mountain States Telephone Company after a farewell service held on Sunday, September 11, 1927. The original church bell now graces the rebuilt St. Paul's Methodist Church in Globe. The bell at Pioneer Arizona is a replica.

Globe is still a mining town, elevation 4,500 feet. In the early 1880's Globe boasted 2 churches, 1 school, 1 bank, 2 drug stores, 2 hotels, several restaurants and lodging houses, blacksmith shop, saloons, and about 10 mercantile houses.

Dress Shop

This area represents an 1890's Phoenix dressmaking shop. By this time, ready-made clothing was widely available. The patrons of this stop would most likely have been upper class women who could afford custom made clothing.

Exhibit Hall Firearms, Tools, Locks & Keys

This is a reconstruction of an original Prescott tin shop, the Fredrick & Hill Tin Shop. Its construction was donated to Pioneer Arizona by the Goettl Brothers Metal Products Company and the Goettl family. It is based upon an 1880 photograph. Samuel Hill became the owner in the 1870's, expanding to hardware and household goods in the 1890's. Many utilitarian objects (coffee pots, dippers, lanterns) were fashioned of tin plate and were essential to domestic life in the 19th century. The craft of the tinsmith was a very important one in America from the colonial period through the 19th century. The tin shop also provided items made of copper and iron. This exhibit currently displays antique tin ware, firearms, tools, and locks.

Tin utensils have virtually been replaced by items of aluminum, stainless steel, and ceramic in the 20th century. However, in Territorial days, many utilitarian items for home use (including cookie cutters, candle sconces, toasters, roasting ovens, strainers, graters, funnels, milk pans, and later highly decorative trays, teapots, and watering pots with brightly painted designs) were made of tin.

Often, the tinsmith spent his winters producing items for sale. Then, during the more favorable seasons, he and his assistants would roam far and wide in their famous wagons peddling their wares and doing repair work.

Incidentally, the expression "not worth a tinker's dam" derives from the dam of flour and water used by the tinsmith to keep his solder from flowing too far during the repair of a utensil.

The Mercantile

The Village Gift Shop is the gateway into Arizona's glorious Western past and a place where you, your family, and friends can get maps and plan your activities before heading out into the "Village". It is also a great place to get refreshed with a cold soda or some snack.

Before leaving, stop back into the Gift Shop and look at the quality candles, soaps, and other homemade items provided by our volunteers. In addition, the store carries a variety of Western memorabilia that will inspire the cowboy or cowgirl in you, and provide a lasting memory of your visit.

Miner's Cabin

The Miner’s Cabin was reconstructed from a glass plate photo of the original cabin which was located in Clifton and occupied by a miner and his family. The original photo clearly shows the curtains and the family, including a baby, standing in front of the cabin. The Seabees Reservists donated their time to build the cabin. Note the unusual framing in the building: there are no stud walls.

This cabin would have been considered luxurious quarters, especially when compared to the tents and dugouts occupied by many miners. The cabin is built of milled lumber and depicts a home within a more settled mining enterprise. Earlier mining camps consisted of tents or shacks hanging precariously from the sides of hills--temporary dwellings lived in only long enough to remove the ore (gold or silver)--until the miners moved on to the next strike.

Located behind the cabin is an exhibit demonstrating a straight mining shaft with its windlass and bucket, and down the trail to the east is a granite boulder bearing evidence of its use as a contest drilling stone, a featured attraction at every mining town holiday festival.

An arrastra, also located on the east trail, is part of this exhibit. The miner would-throw his excavated ore into the granite-lined pit. A mule or horse was used to pull a large boulder (usually weighing around 200 pounds) called a sweep, crushing the ore between the granite drag rocks and base sides.

After the ore was crushed, a process called "amalgamation" was employed involving mercury and heat to produce a nugget of gold. The crushing process was sometimes accomplished in a "stamp mill" at larger operations where an individual miner could pay to have his ore crushed. A stamp mill was in use at the Vulture Mine in Wickenburg as early as 1866.

There are cases reported in Arizona where first arrivals at a gold strike picked nuggets off the ground. Often the first prospectors used a pan or rocker boxes to sift gold dust and nuggets from streams and rivers (placer mining - pronounced plass-er). When the gold ran out at the placer mines, miners would start excavating to reach the veins.

The importance of mining cannot be overemphasized since it was the impetus for the earliest settlers in the Arizona Territory, played an integral part in the history of the state, and is still an important industry.

Print Shop

This shop features operating presses typical of those used in Arizona's Territorial newspaper and working "job" shops. Shops like these provided Arizonans with newspapers, handbills, calling cards, invitations, posters, and any other printing need.

Many towns were so anxious to begin a newspaper that printers set up their presses outdoors under trees. One editor wrote that he produced the first issue of a town paper "seated upon the stump on an ancient oak ...and with the top of a badly abused beaver hat for a table."

The Print Shop is a Reconstruction of an 1890 shop in Phoenix. It contains a press printer, a Washington hand press, and numerous artifacts of the period. A print shop was of paramount importance to the community in the days before radio.

Sheriff's Office

This is a Reconstruction of an 1881 adobe building which stood in Globe. The thick clay, sand and straw walls regulated heat and kept the inhabitants cool in summer and warm in winter. Note the depth and strength of the walls. The original building was a combination of sheriff's office, jail, and courthouse for the circuit judge who probably visited about once a month.

The Maricopa County Supervisor and Sheriff of Maricopa County built the jailhouse and obtained the original old Maricopa jail bars and beds in 1971. It was reconstructed from a glass plate photo of the original Gila County Courthouse.

Note artifacts which include (in the office): gun rack, wanted board, roll top desk and chair; (in the cells): 2 sets of bunks per cell (3 to a bunk), slop bucket.

Southern House

This is an example of palisade and daub construction. The ends of tree trunks and branches are buried in the ground or "earthfast." They provide the support for walls which are finished with a covering of daub (a mixture of clay, and, straw and water). The roof is made of ocotillo, saguaro ribs, and greasewood branches also covered with daub.

An example of one of the earliest houses built in southern Arizona by "anglos", this primitive "picket house" circa 1858, would have housed various pistols, rifles, and knives, axes shovels, buck saw, bucket, deer hides, blankets, dishes, cooking pot, food supplies (coffee, salt, tea, flour, sugar, butter, beans, corn, pinoche and tobacco) as well as a jug of mescal and one of whiskey. A metate for grinding corn for Pinole is part of the exhibit.

The exhibit is based on the published reminisces and illustrations of Horace Chipman Grosvenor, a wood-engraver from Ohio sent out with Phocion R. Way as agents of the Santa Rita Mining Company.

The two men from Ohio, Grosvenor and Way, came to promote mining near Tubac in the Santa Rita Mountains. They made wood block carvings on what they saw and sent prints, along with ore samples, back east to raise money to develop mining. They lived in this type of house for two years. During rain, they would rather sleep outside than inside. Outside they just got wet; inside, they not only got wet, but the mud from the roof fell in on them along with scorpions.

Mr. Grosvenor commented in his diary that, "those who prefer sleeping in the house will spread their blankets on the ground, but I expect a majority of us will still continue to sleep in the open air when the weather will permit."

In a letter to his wife dated July 11, 1858, Horace Grosvenor wrote: "...good bacon, fresh venison, bear meat, coffee, sugar, flour, Pinole, tortillas--beans, butter, cheese... house 15 x 21 and a kitchen 10 x 15 adjoining and am now having the timber got out for another addition of about the same size. Our house or 'casa' fronts the north and is situated on a small mesa between 2 arroyos. . .at one corner, northwest, stands an acacia or mesquite tree, another in front and one just before the kitchen..."

Mr. Grosvenor never returned to his wife in Ohio. He was killed, along with two teamsters, by Apaches. Mr. Way returned to the East.

Stage Stop

The Darrell Duppa Stage Station at Pioneer Arizona was, at one time, an exact duplication of the stage station Duppa operated along the old Phoenix to Wickenburg road on the Agua Fria River from 1871 to 1873. At this time, only the frame remains of the original reconstruction which was accurate and authentic in every detail, including a log, unpainted pine table which served for meals or gambling. According to John Gregory Bourk's description in On the Border with Crook, the table was also used "on the rare occasion when someone took into his head the notion to write a letter."

The shelter was constructed of "wattle and daub". The wattle (which is still evident in the display) is a network of sticks woven into the framework like a giant basket. The daub, a mixture of clay, sand, straw, and water, is applied using the wattle for support as in lath and plaster or rebar and concrete construction.

Also included in the exhibit was the "kitchen" 'of the outpost, described by Bourk as containing "a meager array of Dutch ovens, flat irons, and frying pans. " It is interesting that this crude stopover, where stage passengers were given a blanket for sleeping on the dirt floor and the menu was made up of whiskey and beans, was described by Arizona historian Thomas Parish as "known to travelers for its good appointments."

The location was subject to occasional raids by the the local hostile Apache and Pima Indians. The author, Bourk, attests to Duppa's possession of three bullet wounds from three different fights with the Apaches. One, documented by Farish, tells of a skirmish in which Duppa and a Mexican helper were attacked by 14 wandering Indians and, in.the fight, Duppa was wounded in the leg.

"Lord" Darrell Duppa was an Englishman who had been a colonel in the British Army. He fought a duel with another officer, resigned, and came to Arizona. He was involved in many enterprises, and is sometimes credited with naming the city of Phoenix. That claim is disputed, and many believe that a colleague of Duppa's, Jack Swilling (founder of the Swilling Irrigation and Canal Company, the forerunner of the present-day Salt River Project) actually christened the settlement with its mythic name.

The Stage Stop is under reconstruction.

Smith and Dodd’s Tonsorial Parlor

The sign tells us it’s a “Tonsorial Parlor.” Most dictionaries will tell you tonsorial means of or relating to a barber or the work of a barber, but we could have guessed that from seeing the red, white and blue striped pole standing beside the open door. Tonsorial comes from a Latin word meaning “to shear.”

As we look inside, the barber’s chair is directly in front of us, ready for a regular haircut or a shave. Beside the chair is a large metal bathtub (normally located in a “lean-to” beside or behind the shop). A bath is available for a small fee, but privacy is only a curtain around the tub, and space is truly a premium. Even so, these are luxuries for many residents and visitors in our frontier community.

To the right, inside the front door, is an indication of the multi-talented, many faceted individual running this establishment, a dentist’s chair. Yes, if your tooth is hurting, you can have it extracted. The chair probably did service for many of the other medical/surgical needs provided by our barber-surgeon.

Looking around, we are struck by the many hats most pioneers had to wear. The bottles and jars on the wall were filled with herbs, tonics, salves and ointments, prepared by the proprietor. He was the local pharmacist or “apothecary,” as he would have been called then, and he would have concocted most of these “remedies.” Essentials for home treatment were at hand in a medical bag to be carried to sick or injured residents who could not make it to his “office.”

Days were busy and filled with challenges: shifting from the mundane act of cutting hair to the delicate art of stitching up a cut or lanced boil; extracting an infected tooth, then shaving a customer while talking politics; mixing tonics, salves and unguents while making sure a bather had plenty of hot water and soap. These were the daily activities of the average barber-surgeon in a pioneer village at the turn of Nineteenth Century.

Town Cemetery

This memorial cemetery, typical of 19th century grave sites, does not contain actual graves. The town cemetery honors some of the deceased volunteers who helped build Pioneer Arizona, and the headstones bear their names and dates. Each of our memorials is for a person who, in his or her own lifetime, was a pioneer.

The graves are depicted as the pioneers would have made them. Rocks over the grave were to deter wildlife from digging up the bodies. More than half of the gravestones in a struggling pioneer town would have displayed the names of children from birth to six years of age. Many children and adults were victims of diseases such as smallpox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, etc. Accidents, foul play, and age also took their toll.

Town Ditch

The ditch in town carried water from one end of town to the other, for drinking, cooking, washing, etc.

Mothers would fill a bucket with water and let it stand so the mud could settle to the bottom of the bucket. Then she usually poured the water through a lightweight material to get the horse manure, garbage, sticks, leaves, etc., out of the water. When it looked clear, they drank it. Diseases caused by drinking this water caused more deaths than massacres by the Indians. Many (about half) of the young pioneers died from diseases.

The town ditch in Phoenix flowed through the patio of one of the city's hotels, the Gardner House Hotel. They boarded the sides with redwood and had one of the first indoor swimming pools.