St. David Pioneer Days

Saturday on Miller Lane

On the Saturday morning of St. David Pioneer Days, Miller Lane closes to cars at 8:45. At nine the parade starts at the corner of Merrill Drive, at the north end of North Miller Lane, and runs down to the school parking lot where the lane meets Highway 80. Anyone arriving after the road closes parks at the school and walks back up to the route. Entries come from individuals, families, churches, clubs, nonprofits and businesses. Parade monitors set the pace, and no one stops along the route unless a monitor says so. The theme of the 2026 parade, held July 25, was “Pioneers & Patriots.”

The St. David Heritage Society organizes the celebration. Its 2026 partners were St. David Schools, the St. David Volunteer Fire Department, Apache Nitrogen Products, Arizona G&T Cooperatives, and the St. David Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most of the program takes place on the school grounds along Highway 80.

From 9:30 to noon the crowd moves to Crawford Baseball Field for old- and new-fashioned games and contests, a giant water slide, and family history activities. The 2021 games program listed races, black powder rifles, fire engines, a display of tractors and engines, and wagon rides. The traditional barbecue runs from eleven to one. In 2021 it was served in K-Hall: barbecued beef, beans, cole slaw, tortillas, chips and salsa, drinks and dessert, at $7 for adults and $5 for children under twelve, with a dollar off each plate for Heritage Society members.

The evening program runs from five to nine at the high school football field, Apache Nitrogen Stadium. It includes a youth football scrimmage, food and craft vendors, music and family activities, and a silent auction. The 2021 auction offered an airplane tour of Cochise County and an Apache Powder box. Donations pay for the fireworks. Each donor receives drawing tickets, keeps one half, and drops the stubs into the prize bags of their choice that evening. The prizes are drawn before the fireworks. The Heritage Quilt is drawn just before the Grand Finale Fireworks, and winners need not be present.

The 1938 Building and the quilt

The celebration opens on Friday evening. From six to eight there is an art show in the 1938 Building at St. David Schools and a set of historical displays in the auditorium. The art show reopens Saturday from 9:30 to two. It accepts all mediums, ages and skill levels: paintings, drawings, sculpture, quilts, needlework, wood carving, metal work and photography. Visitors vote for the People’s Choice award. Much of the money the Society raises at its annual events goes to preserving and renovating that 1938 red brick elementary school building.

The quilt is part of the same effort. In 2021 and 2022 the Heritage Quilt was a queen-size piece by Wilda Dillman, valued at $1,500. The 2021 quilt was red, black and cream. The 2022 quilt was custom quilted by Kay’s Quilts. According to the Benson News-Sun, proceeds from the 2022 drawing went to theater upgrades in the 1938 Lansing Auditorium, and the Neil Gintz family of St. David won the quilt. The 2021 newsletter asked supporters to help put lighting and sound equipment in the Mary P. Lansing Auditorium.

The art show itself began in 2022. It was sponsored by the Gallery of Dreams in St. David, coordinated by Claire Smith, an amateur painter of acrylic landscapes, and judged by the Tucson artist Lynn Rae Lowe. “Our art show drew a large number of people throughout the day (Saturday),” Smith told the News-Sun. The top winner that year was Anika Brown, with a paper quilling piece showing the St. David schoolhouse as it stood in 1882. It took two first-place ribbons, one for the overall piece and one for the year’s theme.

A powder company and a cavalry troop

The Heritage Society has coordinated Pioneer Days “for a number of years,” in the words of its 2022 newsletter, and each year brings a theme and a few new features. The 2021 theme was “Celebrate!” That year the town marked the centennial of the Apache Powder Company, now Apache Nitrogen Products, after the pandemic had cancelled the company’s own celebration the summer before. Larry Scott, an Apache retiree, wrote the company’s history for the newsletter. The certificate of incorporation is dated May 19, 1920, and the first stick of powder was packed on April 28, 1922. By 1923 fireless steam locomotives had replaced mules for moving explosives around the plant. Scott writes that the plant eventually became the largest dynamite production site on earth, turning out more than 2,000 cases a day. Former employees were invited as guests of honor to the Lansing Auditorium after the parade, and the company’s historic fire engine rode in the parade. The same year brought the Mormon Battalion Association’s encampment to the games and a new afternoon tour of local farms and businesses, scheduled between the barbecue and the evening program.

The 2022 celebration, held July 22 and 23, took the theme “Settlers & Soldiers.” Fort Huachuca’s B Troop mounted cavalry unit rode in the parade for the first time, along with the Mescal Movie Set stagecoach. An 1840s Mountain Howitzer was fired during the games, veterans were honored in the auditorium after the parade, and Friday night included a family dance. The Mescal Movie Set also sent its “Mescal Legends” for the first time: Emily Blanton, Frank Noel and Cliff Owens. “Mescal Legends are actors that appeared in the classic Westerns filmed from 1970 through 2000 at the Mescal Movie Set,” said Mark Sankey, the set’s director of media and marketing. “They rubbed elbows with the stars and worked on multiple movies.” The set’s historian, Dan Sprenkle, gave a talk on Westerns filmed there and elsewhere in Cochise County, including St. David. “Our celebration included traditional activities that the community looks forward to every year, along with a few new additions,” said Sue Kartchner, a Heritage Society member, organizer, and editor of its newsletter.

Philemon Merrill’s families

The settlers and soldiers of that theme are the town’s founders. St. David sits on the San Pedro River in southeast Arizona. It was founded in 1877, before its better-known neighbor Tombstone. The Society notes that the town’s groundwater gives it a green, oasis-like look in the desert. Philemon Merrill had crossed the San Pedro Valley in 1846–47 with the U.S. Army’s “Mormon Battalion” on its march from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to San Diego. He remembered the country favorably, and in November 1877 he led a handful of families there. In his 1878 Hand-Book to Arizona, Richard J. Hinton wrote that “a small settlement has already sprung up on the San Pedro … and bids fair to thrive and grow into a large settlement soon.”

By early 1878 the settlers had built a rock fort near what is called Escalante Crossing, south and west of the St. David Cemetery. They lived, worshipped and schooled their children there for the first few years. Some of the original stones now trace the fort’s footprint at the cemetery. Six months before Merrill arrived, six U.S. Army soldiers had come into the Huachuca Mountains to establish Camp Huachuca. By the spring of 1879 the St. David settlers were supplying wood and labor for what became Fort Huachuca. Later they freighted ore and goods to and from the railroad at Benson.

That spring and summer the whole group went up to log in the Huachucas. An unpublished manuscript by John Stephen Rizley, “The Journey of Philemon Merrill,” quotes Merrill’s wife Rhoda on why she stayed behind: “My son, Adrian, was helpless—he never walked until he was three years and three months old. There was no water; the reptiles were terrible; and the tarantulas gave me the chills.” She and another woman, whose husband was in Mexico and who had cows to tend, kept the fort alone. “So we two women stayed alone at the fort with only a dog to protect us. An Army captain lent us the dog, he said he would give it to us if we would give it back when we did not need it.”