author
Sharlot Mabridth Hall
1870–1943
A frontier writer and tireless collector of local memory, she helped save Arizona’s early stories before they disappeared. Her poetry, journalism, and historical work made her a lasting voice in the state’s cultural history.
1 Audiobook
Cactus and pine: Songs of the Southwest
by Sharlot Mabridth Hall
About the author
Born in Kansas in 1870, she traveled with her family to Arizona as a child and grew up in the territorial Southwest. Largely self-educated, she became known as a poet, journalist, and historian with a deep interest in the people and places of early Arizona.
She is widely remembered as the first woman to hold office in the Arizona Territorial government. Over time, her passion shifted more and more toward preserving documents, photographs, artifacts, and personal stories from Arizona’s past.
That preservation work became her greatest legacy. The collection she built helped form the foundation of the museum in Prescott that now bears her name, and her writing remains an important window into Arizona’s frontier and territorial years.