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Working for a better future despite drought, depression<br>

They worked for a better future in spite of drought, depression.

In 1892 F. R. Nellis of Williams sold his Grand Canyon stagecoach line to a local livery stable owner named Stanford Rowe.

The stagecoach and its load of South Rim sightseers who arrived at the Williams Depot by train left three times a week on the daylong trip to the Canyon. The driver changed horses three times for fresh ones at relay stations along the way. Hitched behind the stagecoach was a wagon filled with bedrolls, groceries, water barrels, grain and hay.

Increasing numbers of campers from the Phoenix area spent part of the summer near Williams to escape the desert’s heat. Women’s four-button gloves and 10-button shoes were popular. The Williams druggist stocked a patent medicine called Oxien guaranteed to cure indigestion, head colds and insanity. And at New Orleans James J. Corbett beat John L. Sullivan in the first heavyweight championship boxing match fought using padded gloves instead of bare fists.

Williams housewives shopping at a general merchandise store could buy ready-made mince meat, catsup by the gallon, Worcestershire and chili sauce, salad dressing, curry powder and coloring for butter. Cooking still was done on wood-burning stoves, and lunch was the day’s biggest meal — fried meat, fried potatoes, gravy, sometimes another vegetable, bread or biscuits, canned fruit including pineapple, pie or cake.

Ranchers worried about grazing conditions because 1892’s weather was much drier than usual. People began to say ‘guts’ when they meant courage, ‘making goo goo eyes’ for flirting, and ‘hayseed’ for hick. The diesel engine was invented, poets Walt Whitman and Alfred Lord Tennyson died. A St. Petersburg, Russia audience saw the first performance of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” ballet.

A year later in 1893, the parched weather became a full-scale grass killing drought all over Arizona. During one two-month period desperate ranchers shipped 20,000 head of cattle from Williams by train to Kansas for better grazing. Half of Arizona’s cattle not taken somewhere else died of thirst and starvation.

And then a national economic depression began and made things considerably worse. The price of cattle dropped 60 percent, and the wool market collapsed. Sheep sold for as little as $2.50 a head. Corn fell to 36 cents a bushel, cotton to six cents a pound. Factories closed back east, millions lost their jobs, 21,000 businesses failed, banks and railroads went broke.

Many 1893 ranchers, farmers and small town businessmen thought their part of the American dream was being smashed to smithereens. They believed something was wrong with the way big business was conducted and that democracy wasn’t working.

Rigged elections were blamed. So was the United States Senate, selected by politicians and not by popular vote. The Supreme Court, it was said, favored wealthy influential men of privilege, their bankers, corporate lawyers and bribed public officials who controlled prices, wages, legislation, railroad freight rates, natural resources and the means to turn them into finished products.

But in the midst of all that finger pointing and panic Williams residents made positive things happen. They raised $800 to buy uniforms and brass instruments for a town band so there could be community concerts and parades with music. The new Williams Opera House opened at the northwest corner of Grant Avenue and Second Street as a place to hold meetings, dances, banquets, parties and prize fights. Construction of a sawmill which eventually created 300 new jobs started near where the Williams High School is now.

Water for home use came from two public wells, one at the intersection of Grant and Fourth Street, another at Fourth Street and today’s Route 66. And stone masons were building a dam made of rock hauled from Holbrook to increase the water supply by creating a reservoir for steam locomotives and the town.

Buckey O’Neill of Prescott went looking for investors to finance a Williams-Grand Canyon railroad. Two Massachusetts bicycle mechanics began a new age of transportation by bolting a gasoline engine to a horse-drawn buggy. President Grover Cleveland underwent successful cancer surgery kept secret from the public.

A world’s fair called the Colombian Exposition was held on 633 Chicago acres, and the theme was optimism. It was a six-month-long celebration of U. S. industry, agriculture, art, science and initiative.

There were canals and lagoons, huge exhibit halls, sculptures, paintings, balloon rides and the first Ferris wheel. Twenty-seven million visitors saw the first electric stove, an electrified house, Edison’s phonograph and a machine capable of setting type for printing three times faster than by hand.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was there and Little Egypt, who scandalized the nation by performing a belly dance she called the hootchy-kootchy.

Meanwhile, the country’s first 18-hole golf course was completed at Chicago. Colorado women won the right to vote. Most of Ash Fork was destroyed by fire, Flagstaff was called the Gateway to the Grand Canyon, and the sheriff of Apache County east of Williams ordered his deputies to shoot cattle rustlers on sight.

(Jim Harvey is a Williams’ historian who contributes a monthly column depicting our town’s early days.)


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