The Jail Tree

In the early years of Wickenburg, the town had mines and saloons and a post office but no jail. When someone needed to be locked up, the solution was a large mesquite tree on the main street. Prisoners were chained to the tree and left there until someone decided what to do with them, a system that was both practical and, by all accounts, effective enough in a town where the alternative was building something.

The tree stood at the corner of Tegner and Wickenburg Way and served this function during Wickenburg's wild territorial years. The tree was already a substantial mesquite when the town grew up around it, that could anchor a chain without much difficulty. Arizona eventually got proper jails, and the mesquite tree retired from law enforcement, but it kept growing.

The Wickenburg Jail Tree still stands at its original location, still alive after all these years, fitted with a historical marker explaining its former career as the long arm of frontier justice. It is a rare survivor of the frontier habit of using a tree as a jail.