Arizona's Living History

Last weekend (15 November) we tried to go to the Pioneer Living History Village again. Last time turned into a bit of a frustrating mess. This time we made it! We did have a bit of slowdown on I-17 because of construction, but not a bad one. Unfortunately, after all that anticipation, the place was a little underwhelming. We thought that the village was the remnants of an old town that just happened to all still be there. Not so. There were only one or two buildings that might still be where they originally built. The majority of the buildings have signs that clearly state they were moved to their present location from other places in Arizona. A lot came from Prescott, but there were also buildings from Globe, Wickenburg and others places too. Somehow it is not as interesting to have a collection of buildings that were assembled together to appear as a cohesive town, but on the other hand, it’s neat that these buildings have been preserved at all.

Near the entrance is a former general store that now serves as an opera house. It was moved brick-by-brick from its original location. Nearby is a carpenter shop. The walls are covered in old tools and it is quite packed with various machines, tools bits of furniture. It features a lathe from back in the day that was powered by a huge fly-wheel. The tools are assembled from all over the place. They are not one person’s collection.

The place is supposed to feature re-enactors in period dress going about their Old Westy tasks. They have a gun fight daily, but we arrived after that day’s show. The only place we did see people in period dress was at the Victorian house. This was not a fancy Victorian like the Rosson Mansion, this was a more modest home. From the outside it looked basically like your average modern wood frame house, painted yellow. Inside it was decorated with all the trapping you would expect of a place more than 100 years old. The main hallway of the house was very wide with very wide front and back doors. The cross-breeze made the house feel quite comfortable. The re-enactors we saw didn’t even appear to the re-enacting anything. It was just two young ladies making sandwiches on the back porch. They may have also been stoking a fire, but we couldn’t tell. That was the extent to recreation. There is a working blacksmith shop and a working blacksmith as well. He, however, made attempt to be “in character” for the 1880s. His forge was gas powered and stoked by a big air compressor fan. He was working on trinkets for sale in the gift shop. This is not to say that watching someone beat out steel isn’t cool. Maya got a little wizard face key chain he had made.

Walking over to the far end of the place we paced the miner’s shack, the abandoned mine shaft, a narrow cage railway, a stone circle with a label we couldn’t read, the church, the cemetery a burned-out bakery. The bakery may be one of the only buildings this is original to the location, we reach this conclusion only because it was one of the few buildings that did not specifically say it had been moved from elsewhere. It was not in very good shape. Apparently, there used to be a Chinese laundry above the bakery, back in the days when there was a second story. Other than the building itself, most of these places had little to see. They each had a sign telling what you were seeing and a short history of the building it self, but there was little to give a sense of how the buildings were lived in. For a “living history” village, they could have done a better job of bringing the lives of pioneer Arizonians to life. Next to the church was the school teacher’s house and the school. They did a better job of interpreting the past. The one-room school house was originally a residence. When the family got too big (after the coming of their eighth child) they moved on to a bigger place and the old cabin became a school house. It was used until 1920! See? That story makes an old building pop into life! It helps that the school house is the first building to be moved to the site and preserved. Maybe they’ll get around to the other buildings eventually…
Over on the far side of the village, past the rock walled corral and the pair of 1,000 pound man-eating pigs, was an old ranch house. It had the very familiar log cabin look. There were several of these log cabin type homes on the far side. One was the childhood home of Arizona’s first U.S. Senator. Another called the “Flying V” cabin had gun slits cut into the walls because it belonged to someone near Apache land. The Indians are known to have attacked the house in 1882. Coming back around to the front of the village we looked in on the sheriff office/jail/courthouse and the bank. Both of there buildings are not original, but built from period photographs and they are populated by really bad mannequins. There were also some goats and a mule behind the sheriff’s office.
So, all in all, there was a lot of stuff to look at and we spent a few hours there. We weren’t really sure what to expect, but what we found didn’t really meet with expectations. While some stuff was nicely preserved and nicely presented, a lot of stuff was there just because it was old. Lots of mine cars, wagon wheels and old faming equipment were littered about. More than one building was in very bad repair. Also, there wasn’t much that made this collection of buildings unique. Nothing that seemed to say, “This is Arizona, only here could this have happened.” Maybe there isn’t anything like that in Arizona, but there has to be. Maybe we just go to too many museums and nerdy history-related sites, but this one didn’t really impress us.