Early History of Flagstaff

Let's visit another book on Flagstaff history, by Platt Cline, They Came to the Mountain: The Story of Flagstaff's Beginnings.

You already know that I'm a big Platt Cline fan. And you know that I'm very interested in Flagstaff and Coconino County history. So, this is the perfect book for me--bringing the two together.

I was hooked from the beginning. Bernard L. Fontana, ended his foreword to They Came to the Mountain, dated April 1976, with this:

"At least as early as the summer of 1882, the townspeople were fussing over the need for schools, churches, and fraternal organizations. ...

None of this sounds like a wild and wooly western town of movie matinee and television fame. It sounds instead like a piece of already well-established middle America transplanting itself beneath the shadow of the San Francisco Peaks, 'The Mountain' to which men came. And the transplant has been a success. Today's Flagstaff boasts three astronomical observatories, a university and a renowned museum of anthropology and natural history, the Museum of Northern Arizona. As Cline remarks, 'the community's attitudes and values favoring [such institutions] were already evident in the 1880s.'

Platt Cline's concern for the present and his love for his home have led him to examine our common past. We are in his debt for having brought us, too, to the mountain."

This pretty much sums it up, but you really must find a copy of this book. You will be so glad you did.