Visiting Wickenburg

Wickenburg, about 60 miles northwest of downtown Phoenix, is the oldest town in Arizona north of Tucson, being founded in the early 1860s, beating Phoenix by about five years.  It owed its founding and initial growth to the discovery of gold and the presence of the Hassayampa River.

It had continued prosperity in the first part of the 20th century due to its location on the road from Phoenix to both Prescott and Los Angeles, losing that advantage in the 1970s, when I-10 from Phoenix to LA was located to the south and I-17 provided a faster route to Prescott, while avoiding Wickenburg.

Today we visited the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in the town, which proved to be a little gem of a museum.  The Caballeros museum is in the small downtown area and there are several restaurants within a block.  On its ground level floor the museum features interesting western art and exhibits on the history of Wickenburg, but it is when you descend into the basement that you find the real treasure - recreated stores and houses of 1912 Wickenburg along with well-done and fascinating dioramas of different aspects of the town and region's history.  A great way to spend an hour and a half, and kids would love that downstairs area, just as we did.

Favorite 2018 Books

My favorite books published during 2018:

“The Field of Blood” by Joanne Freeman, charts the increasing violence, much of it linked to disputes over slavery, in the House and Senate from 1835 through 1861. Duels, fistfights, canings, knifings, and threats aplenty.

“The Last Pass: Cousy, Russell, the Celtics, and What Matters in the End” by Gary Pomerantz. (Previously reviewed by me in (The Cooz and The Babe)  If you’d asked me at the start of the year if I was interested in reading a biography of Bob Cousy, my response would have been, “Shirley, you must be joking” but a review I saw prompted me to take a chance. What a great book! Cousy is now 90 and, along with being a fine biography, it’s the tale of an intelligent and thoughtful man looking back on his life as well as a meditation on aging. Plus great anecdotes about Red Auerbach and the NBA of the 1950s, like Tommy Heinsohn running into the locker room at halftime to smoke a few cigarettes before the second half.

“Cult City” by Daniel Flynn, a chilling tale of San Francisco in the 1970s featuring the Reverend Jim Jones, celebrated by local and state pols before 900+ died in Guyana, and Harvey Milk, celebrated via the creation of a myth after his death, 10 days after Jones and his followers died.

“Arizona’s Deadliest Gunfight” by Heidi Osselaer. It wasn’t the OK Corral, where the Earps and Doc Holliday gunned down three (see OK Corralapalozza for more), but the attempted arrest in 1918 of two WW1 draft dodgers at an isolated cabin a few dozen miles north of Tombstone that left four dead, including three lawmen, and resulted in two men serving the longest prison sentence in state history. The author takes what could have been a dry story and with new research and fine writing wrote a engaging tale about the people who settled the rough lands of Arizona and New Mexico, as well as giving the context in which the shoot out occurred; the imposition of the draft by the Wilson Administration, the widespread opposition, and the law enforcement tactics used to break the resistance to the draft.

Didn’t come across any new fiction to make my highlights but really enjoyed a recent series of five novels by Jason Goodwin, set in Constantinople in the 1830s and 1840s, featuring Yashim, a eunuch detective with connections to the Sultan.  Allows the reader to envision the city and its culture. The first is “The Janissery Tree“.