Who was Sharlot M. Hall?

Saving the Past

A Home for Her Collection

Sharlot as a Politician

Sharlot As Activist

Sharlot As Historian

Sharlot As a Writer and Poet

Sharlot As a Woman

Moving West

Ranch Woman

ARIZONA
by Sharlot M. Hall

The Genesis of the Earth and Moon

A Home for Her Collection

As early as 1907, Sharlot Hall planned to develop a museum for her collections. Finally, on June 20th, 1927, she signed a contract to house these artifacts in Arizona’s 1864 Governor’s Mansion and to operate it as a public museum. For the rest of her life she worked to preserve the old log building and to save Arizona’s historic past. Sharlot had called her home and business the Old Governor’s Mansion Museum and in the 1930s with the help of Civil Works Administration she had the Sharlot Hall Building built behind it and began to call the new building the Sharlot Hall Museum. After Sharlot’s death in 1943 the entire museum was officially named for her.

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Copper sign commemorating construction of the Museum’s Sharlot Hall Building; Sharlot Hall Museum C.W.A Project P-42 Yavapai County, 1934.

Sharlot Hall in the Governor’s Mansion, 1930.

A replica of a log ranch house was built on the museum grounds in 1936 to house Sharlot’s collection of ranching gear.

The "House of A Thousand Hands," now called the Sharlot Hall Building, under construction in 1935.

Fiorello LaGuardia, later mayor of New York City, visits the Governor's Mansion in 1935.  His father had been chief musician at Fort Whiplle in Prescott.  From Left: La Guardia, Charles Robb, Mrs. LaGuradia, Sharlot, Grace Sparks, and an unidentified man.