For a few hours on Tuesdays and Saturdays the Camp Verde Historical Society opens its little museum for history buffs and visitors. It’s a compact place in an old school building (circa 1914), with two rooms of permanent displays and rotating exhibits about the early pioneering days of Camp Verde. The museum touches on the many different groups who have called the area home—soldiers, Indians, town settlers, farmers, miners, mail riders and business owners.
In addition to photographs, artwork and other printed material, the museum houses a permanent collection of historic artifacts, such as
- a wagon wheel,
- cowboy paraphernalia, including saddles, harnesses, branding irons, cow bells and leather cuffs,
- Apache and Yavapai Indian artifacts—from yucca sandals to arrowheads,
- vintage farming tools, such as a hand scythe and wood auger,
- mining equipment and a collection of rocks,
- a model of Clear Creek Church, the first church built in the Verde Valley,
- instruments, including a guitar, fiddle and an ornate Wood and Marshall piano,
- pioneer clothing, such as sun bonnets and go-to-town shoes,
- mail carrier Ruffy Peach’s canteen and chaps,
- a 100-gallon still,
- depression glass-serving pieces and
- antique butcher scales, a Burroughs’s manual adding machine and items once sold in the Wingfield mercantile.
What makes this museum stop-in truly worth the trip, however, are Camp Verde’s first ladies who come together weekly at the museum to have tea and conversation and to give visitors first-hand accounts of Camp Verde’s pioneering days. Many can trace their roots to Camp Verde’s infancy.
The Camp Verde Historical Society is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization. Although it is primarily dedicated to the restoration, preservation, reconstruction, and administration of buildings and sites of historical significance in the Camp Verde area, the society houses archival materials going back to the 1860s and maintains a research library.
Its small museum gift shop helps fund some of the group’s activities, including providing a conference room for the community, publishing a monthly newsletter, sponsoring a community birthday calendar, holding workshops, organizing day trips to historic sites, sponsoring the annual “Pioneer Picnic” each September and maintaining the two historic buildings it owns:
· Clear Creek Church, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Sites in August 1975. The church is occasionally rented for weddings and loaned for pioneer funerals.
· George Hance House, a historic structure built next to the surgeon’s quarters at Fort Verde in 1916-17 for Justice of the Peace, postmaster, notary public and cattleman George Hance.
The house is available for viewing by appointment and during Fort Verde celebrations and special activities. It is completely furnished with period furniture and household accessories as well as tools, art, books, clothing and other miscellaneous items.
The Camp Verde Historical Society is the direct descendant of an earlier association in Camp Verde, the Fort Verde Museum Committee, which was founded to preserve the buildings at Fort Verde and turn them into an on-site museum. The museum finally opened on November 23, 1956, in what was once the fort’s administrative building. Within a decade, the group purchased two other buildings that were part of the fort.
However, operating the museum and maintaining the historic buildings was too much for the group so the members petitioned the Arizona Historical Society to take over the project. The transfer was finalized on July 21, 1970, and in October of that year, Fort Verde became an Arizona state park.
The committee proceeded to reinvent itself as the Camp Verde Historical Society in the early 1970s and divided up the preservation of the history of the area between itself and the park. It was decided that Fort Verde State Park would concentrate on the military history of the area with exhibits and reconstructed living quarters. The Camp Verde Historical Society would focus on the history of the town and the local settlement.
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