Cottonwood

Concrete on North Main

Forty-two of the 57 properties in Cottonwood’s commercial district were built mainly of concrete, and the National Register nomination notes that some scraps in them came from farm equipment, a sign of the town’s change from farming village.¹ The Cottonwood Commercial Historic District holds 53 buildings and 4 structures, and its boundary marks the approximate extent of the historic downtown.¹ The town lies in eastern Yavapai County, five miles from Jerome on Mingus Mountain, which the nomination calls one of the nation’s largest producers of copper ore.¹

Farmers Under the Cottonwoods

In 1871 the Cottonwood locality became part of the Rio Verde Reservation, and with its native population removed, the valley drew Euroamerican settlers.¹ The nomination says pioneers who settled in the mid 1870s found a situation nearly ideal for farming.¹ The Writers’ Program state guide names James Oliver Bristow as the first permanent settler, who arrived with his family in 1875 and sheltered them in a dug-out until he could build a better house.² R. W. Pleasant and Issac C. Jones established the Hickey Ditch in 1874, and it delivered irrigation water to as many as 175 acres.³ General Land Office surveyors who came through in May 1877 reported that the farmers called their settlement “Cottonwood,” after its lofty deciduous trees.¹ The government established a post office on March 6, 1879, and that June the man later called the “father of Cottonwood” arrived at the age of 20.¹

Between the Smelters

In 1894 the United Verde built a smelter on the mountain above Jerome, and when it began to sink into the mine workings, the company broke ground in 1912 for a new one in the valley two miles north of Cottonwood.¹ The smelter towns of Clemenceau and Clarkdale were company towns laden with restrictions, while Cottonwood drew entrepreneurs who wanted to do business without local regulation.¹ One newcomer applied to paint houses in Clarkdale, was told they were not hiring Italians, and settled in Cottonwood.¹ The company town that grew near the UVX smelter was named Verde, then Clemenceau, and the state guide records that the United Verde Extension Mining Company smelter there opened in 1918 and closed for good in January 1937.^1,2

Charles Stemmer and Alonzo Mason laid out Main Street in 1908, but up to March 1917 the business section was only Mason’s store and post office.¹ Then the promise of the UVX smelter set off a boom in 1917, lots in the new additions sold briskly for $125, and builders rushed in until a local paper joked about the carpenters.¹ When the valley’s copper industry surged during World War I, so did the downtown, and a census conducted by the State in mid 1918 counted 64 business people in town.¹ A fire on December 3, 1917, destroyed five buildings that held seven businesses.¹ The newly formed Cottonwood Progressive Association, part chamber of commerce and part city council, organized a fire-fighting unit, put up a fire house, and laid in 300 ft of hose.¹ With two exceptions, none of the buildings from before 1920 still stands.¹

Stills, a Jail, and River Cobbles

Around 1928 Sheriff George Ruffner stepped up county raids on Cottonwood’s distillers.¹ Townspeople worried about a lawless reputation lobbied for a jail, and river cobbles, a sheathing material that appeared in 1929, were first used on the Cottonwood Jail at 1101 N. Main, built by a Prescott contractor.¹ The CWA and WPA then used cobbles on the Cottonwood Bridge about 1934, the Del Monte Wash Bridge about 1935, and the Cottonwood Community Civic Club in 1939.¹ Leslie Mahoney designed the Civic Club, and donations from 54 local business people helped pay for it.¹ When the Writers’ Program compiled its Arizona guide, it listed Cottonwood at 3,310 feet with 800 people and called it one street wide, a place cowboys came to from the range and prospectors from their camps in the mountains.²

A Quonset Hut and a Late Charter

The nomination says the Depression changed the economy of Cottonwood and the middle Verde Valley.¹ An airport was developed in the 1920s and 1930s a mile south of Cottonwood, and in town the Marianna building at 826 N. Main became the mess hall.¹ In 1947 a Quonset hut that had been used to train World War II Naval cadets was moved from the Cottonwood airport to North Main, where it showed huge, 16-light display windows.¹ The same freedom from local regulation that drew business was a major reason Cottonwood did not incorporate until 1960.¹ In 1973 the farmland along the Hickey Ditch was sold to the State of Arizona and became Dead Horse Ranch State Park.³ The ditch’s water now fills the park’s lagoons and irrigates its green recreation areas.³