Sharlot Hall: Arizona's First Official Historian

The large museum complex off the main plaza in Prescott carries the name of a woman who devoted her life to preserving the history of a place that was disappearing almost as fast as it was being made. Sharlot Mabridth Hall was born in Kansas in eighteen seventy and arrived in Arizona with her family in the early eighteen eighties at the age of eleven, settling in the Prescott area. She grew up on a ranch in the central highlands, began writing poetry and journalism, and developed an intense commitment to documenting the world she saw around her before it vanished.

In nineteen zero nine, the governor of the Arizona Territory appointed Hall as the territory's first official historian, making her the first woman to hold a salaried position in the territorial government. It was a role she took seriously. She traveled across the territory, collecting artifacts, recording oral histories from pioneers and Native people, and photographing communities that were in the process of transformation.

When the position ended after a change in administration, she continued the work on her own. In nineteen twenty-eight, Hall opened a museum in Prescott on the grounds of the old territorial governor's mansion, displaying the objects she had spent decades collecting. She donated the collection to the state and spent the rest of her life building the institution that now bears her name.

Sharlot Hall died in nineteen forty-three. The Sharlot Hall Museum remains one of the most significant repositories of Arizona history and occupies nearly four acres of downtown Prescott.