The Palace Saloon

The Palace is the oldest business on Whiskey Row, documented as early as 1877 and rebuilt in brick after an 1883 fire with a twenty-foot bar freighted in by boat and wagon. Its most enduring story comes from the fire of July 14, 1900: as flames took the block, patrons are said to have hauled the heavy Brunswick bar out to the plaza and drunk on while the building burned. The saloon rose again around that rescued bar, and it still pours beneath the same fixtures that Doc Holliday and the Earps once leaned against.

What the plaque says

The exact age of Prescott's Palace Saloon is something of a puzzle. The first reliable documentation is an item from the September 21, 1877 Arizona Weekly Miner reporting that Shaw and Standefer had fitted up the Palace Saloon in superb style with choice liquors. An 1883 fire destroyed most of The Row, including the Palace. Owner Robert Brow rebuilt in brick, with a stone foundation and iron roof. The interior featured a twenty-foot bar and beautiful back-bar shipped by boat and freight wagon to Prescott, three gaming tables and two club rooms. On July 14, 1900, much of downtown Prescott burned, including the fireproof Palace Saloon.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Prescott — steps away
  Arizona's first territorial capital — Whiskey Row, the courthouse square, and a mile-high pine town
• Jerome — 25 mi
  The billion-dollar copper camp clinging to Cleopatra Hill — now the largest ghost town in America
• Tuzigoot — 30 mi
  A hilltop Sinagua pueblo over the Verde, dug out of the ground in the Depression

More markers nearby

• Whiskey Row — steps away
• Prescott, Territorial Capital — steps away
• Prescott's First Mining District — steps away
• Site of the Territorial Courthouse — steps away