Drew Desmond was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. He followed into the family business of advertising as a writer, after receiving a B.S. in the same at Southern Illinois University.

 Having first discovered Prescott on vacation in 1986, Drew decided to retire there. However, after several more visits, he became hard-pressed to find a reason to wait that long and moved to the area 25 years earlier than planned.

 Drew discovered that writing advertisements brought only a limited amount of fulfillment and he decided to turn his attention to writing about the history of Prescott and Yavapai County. 

 He founded the #PrescottAZHistory blog and commenced spending over 1000 hours a year reading old newspapers, periodicals, and books to provide the research necessary for his weekly articles. Today the blog has welcomed over a half-million readers.

 Drew is also administrator of the popular “Celebrating Historic Prescott” Facebook group which provides an image daily and three Prescott history articles per week. His #PrescottAZHistory Twitter account is followed by many local institutions including businesses, reporters, politicians, and even towns.

Gurley: The Man Behind the Street Name

Jan 11

A year following John Addison Gurley’s untimely death on August 19, 1863, the first edition of the Arizona Miner wrote: “Be it ours to erect to him a lasting monument, by giving his name to one of the loftiest hills, or to a district glistening with the brightest gold.” Instead, the downtown main street of Prescott, Arizona’s first territorial capital, would be named in his honor.

The story of why is most compelling.

Gurley was born in East Hartford, Connecticut on December 9, 1814 and at the age of 21, he completed theological studies in Hartford.

He became a preacher in the denomination of Universalists. He took a church in Metheun, Massachusetts and served there for three years, but he desired to move westward.

In 1838 he relocated to Cincinnati, Ohio where he edited and published “The Star of the West, a paper devoted to the interests of the denomination with which he was connected,” the Miner revealed, “and which had a very large circulation throughout the South and West.” He held this position for fifteen years.

However, it was during this time that Gurley started experiencing “mystery pains” and sufferings. So, he “retired to a beautiful farm in the suburbs of Cincinnati.” Then in 1856, he was nominated to run for Congress, but lost. He ran again in 1858 and won “by a flattering majority,” the paper declared. After serving in the Civil War as a Colonel under the command of John C Fremont, he was re-elected to Congress in 1869 “by an increased vote.”

“He was popular with all parties and acknowledged to be one of the cleverest men in Congress.” He was also Arizona’s biggest champion; striving hard to make it a recognized Territory. “He was proud of the boundless resources of the West, and was one of the earliest to advocate the organization of Arizona,” the paper recounted. 

For more information on Prescott History by Drew Desmond see: https://prescottazhistory.blogspot.com/2021/10/gurley-man-behind-street-name.html#more