Arizona’s coolest town sits at 5,200 feet and it looks nothing like Arizona

Arizona’s mile-high frontier town

Downtown Prescott doesn’t look like Arizona. At 5,200 feet, ponderosa pines replace saguaros, the air runs cool even in summer, and the streets around a four-acre courthouse plaza feel like something out of the 1880s, because in a lot of ways, they still are.

This is where Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday lived before Tombstone. Where Arizona’s oldest bar survived a fire by being carried across the street.

And where a summer rodeo has run every single year since 1888.

Prescott was Arizona’s capital before Phoenix existed

President Abraham Lincoln signed the act creating the Arizona Territory in 1863, and Prescott became its first capital the following year.

The capital shuffled around, to Tucson and back, before landing in Phoenix in 1889 for good.

Before all that happened, Prescott was already a rough-edged frontier town drawing miners, cowboys, and a few famous faces. Virgil Earp and Doc Holliday both lived here before they made their names in Tombstone.

When fire burned down large sections of the town in 1900, residents rebuilt in brick. Those buildings are still standing.

170 trees shade the plaza at the center of it all

The Yavapai County Courthouse Plaza has been the heart of Prescott since 1864.

The four-acre green space sits at the intersection of Gurley, Cortez, Goodwin and Montezuma streets, and more than 170 trees shade its paths, including 127 American elms planted around 1908.

At the center stands the granite courthouse, built in 1916 in the Neo-Classical Revival style. A bronze statue on the grounds honors the Rough Riders of the Spanish-American War, placed in 1907.

The American Planning Association named this one of America’s Great Public Spaces in 2008.

Saloons once packed Whiskey Row wall to wall

Directly across from the plaza runs Montezuma Street, better known as Whiskey Row. Dozens of saloons once lined this block, serving miners, cowboys and settlers passing through.

On July 14, 1900, fire tore through five city blocks and took most of the Row with it.

Locals rebuilt in brick and stone, and those same buildings stand today, housing a mix of historic saloons, shops and galleries.

Walk the block now and you’re walking through the same walls they raised out of the ashes more than 120 years ago.

Patrons carried the bar outside to save it from the flames

The Palace Restaurant and Saloon dates to 1877, making it Arizona’s oldest bar and oldest operating business.

Its centerpiece is a hand-carved Brunswick bar built in New Jersey, shipped by sea around South America and hauled by mule to Prescott.

When the 1900 fire came, patrons dragged that 24-foot oak bar across the street to save it. They rebuilt the saloon in 1901, and it was called the most beautiful saloon in all of Arizona.

Staff still dress in 1880s period clothing, and the booths carry names like Earp and Holliday.

Walk inside the cabin where Arizona’s government began

Two blocks west of the courthouse, the Sharlot Hall Museum spreads across a four-acre campus with 11 exhibit buildings, six of them historic.

The 1864 Territorial Governor’s Mansion sits on the grounds, along with Fort Misery, the oldest surviving log cabin in Arizona, also built in 1864.

The museum owes its existence to Sharlot M. Hall, a poet and activist who became Arizona’s first female Territorial Historian.

She restored the Governor’s Mansion herself, filled it with pioneer and Native American artifacts, and opened the museum to the public in 1928.

An opera house that has never really stopped performing

The Elks Theatre and Performing Arts Center went up in 1905 and seats about 500 people. Over the decades it ran as an opera house, a movie theater, and a lodge hall.

The City of Prescott took ownership in 2001, and by 2010 the interior was fully restored. Today the calendar stays full with concerts, tribute bands, plays, and community events throughout the year.

The building sits on the National Register of Historic Places, and from the inside, the work that went into the restoration is hard to miss.

The 4th Friday Art Walk turns the whole downtown into a gallery

Prescott has dozens of independently owned galleries, antique shops and boutiques within walking distance of the plaza.

On the fourth Friday of each month, the 4th Friday Art Walk runs through the district with gallery openings, live music and chances to meet artists in person.

The Mountain Artists Guild, a nonprofit co-op founded in the 1940s, has more than 300 members showing paintings, ceramics and jewelry.

Several galleries sit inside the historic St. Michael Hotel building at the corner of Montezuma and Gurley. Antique and Western-wear shops line Cortez Street, one block from the plaza.

The first rodeo to charge admission and award cash prizes

Prescott Frontier Days held its first event on July 4, 1888, making it the World’s Oldest Rodeo. That was the first formalized cowboy tournament to charge admission and award cash prizes.

The U.S. Patent Office registered the trademark in 1985. The rodeo has run every single summer since, without a single missed year.

Each time it comes around, the parade runs through downtown near the courthouse plaza, and the streets fill up the way they have for well over a century.

More than 100,000 lights turn the elm trees into something else entirely

Arizona Governor Rose Mofford gave Prescott the title of “Arizona’s Christmas City” in 1989, but the tradition behind it goes back much further.

The city put up its first municipal Christmas tree on the plaza in 1916, and the full lighting tradition dates to the 1950s.

Today, more than 100,000 lights cover the plaza’s elm trees and the courthouse itself, switched on the first Saturday of December each year.

The holiday season runs through the month with parades, concerts and a Frontier Christmas at Sharlot Hall Museum.

Free concerts, rodeos and festivals fill the plaza all year

The courthouse plaza doesn’t sit quiet between the big events. Free summer concerts run on weekend evenings right on the plaza.

In June, Territorial Days brings more than 100 arts and crafts vendors to the grounds. The Folk Arts Fair comes in June as well, the Folk Music Festival in October.

Each July, the Prescott Indian Art Market takes over the Sharlot Hall Museum campus.

Most of these events are either free or low-cost, and almost all of them put you in the middle of downtown with everything else within walking distance.

Granite boulders, lakes and trails sit minutes from the plaza

Prescott has more lakes within city limits than any other city in Arizona.

Watson Lake, just minutes from downtown, sits inside the Granite Dells, a stretch of rounded granite boulders shaped over millions of years. The lake has kayak rentals, fishing and a nearly five-mile trail loop.

Lynx Lake, a 55-acre lake inside Prescott National Forest, has a three-mile shoreline path, fishing and boating.

Thumb Butte rises above the treeline with a trail that gives you clear views of the town and the forest surrounding it on all sides.

Walk downtown Prescott, Arizona

To get to the center of it all, head to the Yavapai County Courthouse Plaza at 120 S. Cortez St. in Prescott. The plaza is open daily and free to walk.

Prescott sits about two hours north of Phoenix, and the elevation keeps summer temperatures around 70 degrees with four distinct seasons throughout the year.

Downtown is compact enough to cover on foot, with most of what you’d want to see within a few blocks of the plaza in any direction. Check the official website for current event schedules and parking information.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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