This blogger battled high altitude, dry air, and a near-empty library to make an important discovery in Greer, Arizona (elevation 8,356 feet). A local historian, Wink Crigler, not only preserved one of the two guest cabins at great grandfather J.E. Thompson’s lodge but possessed the only known photograph of the main lodge, built in about […]
Archives for April 2023
The Unexciting Truth About William Boyce Thompson’s Picket Post Mansion
After his stroke, a personal assistant rolled an invalid William Boyce Thompson in a bathtub on wheels to the window so that he could watch the sunrise over Apache Leap from his beloved Picket Post mansion. The heartwarming story is one of several compelling urban legends told to visitors of the Magnate’s Castle on the […]
Philip Benjamin: Portrait of a Small-Time Con
The life of Philip Benjamin (1779-1852) remains a mystery. But a review of his legal woes in the 1820s, when he was trying to raise a family, paints a clear portrait of him as a swindler. The first-generation Jewish American was in and out of court, losing case after case, with the exact ineffectual attorney, […]