Camp Verde

Fort Verde Ground

A marker near Camp Verde says the original military and historic buildings of Fort Verde still stand, and it calls Camp Verde the oldest settlement in the Verde Valley.¹ The Historic American Buildings Survey photographed an officer’s house at the post.³ The National Register nomination for Pecan Lane described Camp Verde as a Yavapai County town of approximately 7200 people.²

From Camp Lincoln to the Last Garrison, 1864–1891

In the summer of 1864 hay cutters from Prescott harvested the lush black grama of the Middle Verde.² In February a settlement party of 19 men and six wagons of supplies set out, and the marker dates the first settlers’ arrival in the valley to February, 1865.^1,2 The party split, and one faction, led by Parrish, favored a plot on the Verde upstream.² The settlers petitioned the Army for protection from Indian attack, and the marker says the military followed in August, 1865.^1,2 The Army moved its encampment upstream and named it Camp Lincoln, where the men lived on inadequate food with almost no pay or supplies.² Pauline Weaver, the prospector and scout whom a Prescott marker names the first settler on the site of Prescott, died at Camp Verde on June 21, 1867.⁴ The site bred malaria-carrying mosquitoes; the camp was renamed in 1868, and in 1871 the military moved Camp Verde to higher ground.² General George Crook led a campaign against the Yavapai and Apache in 1872-1873, and following the removal of the native population in 1875 the valley attracted many new Euroamerican farmers.² A Sedona marker counts soldiers from Camp Verde among that town’s early tourists, who sought its cooler temperatures and Oak Creek as a break from the camp.⁵ The government abandoned the fort in 1881, occasionally regarrisoned the post, by then called Fort Verde, and saw the last garrison depart in 1891.² From 1884 to 1914 mail riders and carriers delivered mail 52 miles from Camp Verde to Payson, braving weather, rough terrain and the Verde River.⁶

Feeding Jerome

As the Army left, farmers eyed the 18 square miles of the military reservation, and the copper camp of Jerome, 20 miles west, became a market for produce and meat.² The government’s 1895 announcement opening the land to private entry set off a run on the General Land Office, as squatters rushed to record their claims.² In 1910 the town’s 269 people devoted themselves to feeding miners in Jerome and smelter workers in Clarkdale and Clemenceau.² Irrigated land in the Middle Verde fell from 7,000 acres in 1901 to 5,747 acres in 1920.² The Pecan Lane nomination says farms near the smelters were most affected by the pollution and damage in distant Camp Verde was harder to gauge; in April 1925 the United Verde Extension Mine commissioned a study, and a 1925 report by Thompson found plants in excellent foliage and no signs of smoke injury.² A marker in Camp Verde records a link belt power shovel, one of three made in Ames, Iowa, in 1920, that worked the Camp Verde Salt Mine in 1928.⁷

Pecan Lane

Homesteader James D. Price patented the Pecan Lane property in 1904, the year a one-story barn went up beside the Eureka Ditch.² Robert W. Wingfield built a stone farmhouse there in 1917, the first sizable farm travelers saw entering Camp Verde from the north.² The UVX bought Wingfield’s house and acreage in 1926, and that year Noah Haydon moved onto the place with his son Carl and daughter-in-law Eva.² In 1927-1928 Eva Haydon planted pecan seedlings, growing the trees from seeds in one-gallon cans from a Camp Verde store, from nuts a relative brought from Texas.² When the UVX closed in 1943, Noah lost his job and the family sold most of the land to Buster and Alma Tatum, who raised flowers, melons, corn, apples, peaches and milk cows.² Three rows of pecan trees still distinguish Pecan Lane, the eastern row approximately 1700 feet long.²