Prescott, Arizona: Everybody's Hometown (Whether the Cowboys Like It or Not)

Prescott, Arizona calls itself "Everybody's Hometown," which is the kind of slogan you write after a long history of being somebody's hometown but not everybody's. I spent some time digging through this mile-high Yavapai County seat, and RoastMyTown.com has already taken a flamethrower to it. I'll try to be fairer. I won't be much nicer.

The "World's Oldest Rodeo" Is Older Than Your Great-Grandma's Opinions

Prescott's Frontier Days rodeo has been bucking since 1888, and the town has been dining out on that fact ever since. RoastMyTown says the show is tired. I say it's a 130-plus-year-old tradition that has outlasted every other idea anyone has had in Arizona, including most of the cities in it.

The town's roots go deeper than the rodeo. Prescott was named for popular historian William Hickling Prescott and founded in 1864 as the territorial capital. Fun detail: the man it's named for never set foot in Arizona. The glory was short-lived, though, because the Territorial Capital was moved to Tucson in 1867. That makes Prescott the original "we were the capital once" town, and it has been bringing that up at parties ever since.

The history is real, though. The first Governor's Mansion was built of ponderosa pine logs from the nearby mountains and is now preserved as part of the Sharlot Hall Museum. A log cabin that used to house a territory's government is more than most statehouses can claim.

Whiskey Row: Forty Saloons Walk Into a Fire

Whiskey Row is the part of the roast that stings, because it's partly true. Prescott's Montezuma Street once packed in a wild number of saloons, and a famous fire wiped most of them out. Today it's a handful of bars, a lot of boots that have never touched a stirrup, and the Palace, which the roast accuses of "disappointing customers the longest."

I'll defend the Palace a little. Surviving a fire, a century of cowboys, and a century of tourists asking "is this the real one?" takes some stamina. And Whiskey Row still faces the Courthouse Plaza, a shady square with a statue of Buckey O'Neill, the Rough Rider and local legend, standing guard over the whole thing. Prescott even rings in the new year with an annual Whiskey Row Boot Drop, which is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds and exactly why you should go.

The place isn't frozen in amber, either.

Mile-High Pretensions, Sea-Level Mac and Cheese

At roughly 5,300 feet, Prescott sits at the edge of one of the largest ponderosa pine forests in the world, within a couple of hours' drive of Phoenix, Flagstaff, and the Grand Canyon. That's a fancy way of saying it's the place Phoenicians flee to when their car thermometer hits 115. Prescott has long been a summer retreat for southern Arizona desert urbanites from Phoenix and Tucson.

With refugees come restaurants with Edison bulbs, and with Edison bulbs come $28 mac and cheese. The roast isn't wrong that locals still queue up for breakfast burritos and pizza. That's not an indictment, that's wisdom. Get the burrito and spend the saved $20 on a second rodeo hat you'll wear exactly once.

The Diversity Museum Burn (and the Fair Reading)

Card 4 is the roast's spiciest, so let's handle it with some care. Prescott's history includes some ugly boosterism, and a town with that past deserves a raised eyebrow when it starts building museums. But the roast skips something: the Prescott area was home to the ancestors of the Yavapai Prescott Indian Tribe, which today has a strong community and business presence in the region. The Yavapai lived here long before the town, and the county is literally named for them.

The numbers say the town isn't exactly a melting pot. Prescott had a 2020 population of 45,827, and plenty of those residents are retirees, so "diversity" here often means a mix of golf and pickleball. A museum can't fix history, but telling it honestly is better than not telling it. Go, read the plaques, and tip well afterward.

So, Should You Visit Prescott, Arizona?

Yes. Prescott has a rodeo that predates most American traditions, a historic downtown square, pine forests, cooler summers, and a Whiskey Row that's gloriously a little silly. It also has real life going on. A town where the retirees keep showing up for their community is a town doing something right.

Go for the rodeo, stay for the burrito, and skip the mac and cheese.

Think we were too nice? See the full roast on RoastMyTown.com.