Thomas Forsythe McMillan was born in Tennessee on January 1, 1833. As a young man, he joined the countless number of prospectors who went to California in search of gold. He then traveled to Australia where he raised sheep. How long he was there isn't clear but he finally arrived in Arizona in 1876 and established a <a href="https://theclio.com/entry/115603" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">homestead</a> a few miles north of the city. McMillan again raised sheep and also built a ranch house, which still stands and is operated by the <a href="https://theclio.com/entry/13697" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Museum of Northern Arizona</a>. On July 4th of that 1876, a group of pioneers from Boston camped near a spring on his newly acquired land. They cut down a pine tree, cut off the branches, and hoisted it up with an American flag attached at the top. This flag raising ceremony was how the city got its name.McMillan became one of the more successful sheep ranchers in the the state. He also contributed to the town's early development, serving as chairman of the Board of Supervisors, the first Postmaster, and as a member of the first library board. As noted above, he finished the building in 1888 and it initially operated as a bank and a hotel. In 1892, the hotel became the terminus of a stagecoach service that brought guests to and from the Grand Canyon. At some point, too, the building operated an opera house on the first floor that became a popular entertainment and gathering venue. McMillan and his family eventually moved into the building.When Thomas McMillan died in 1906, his wife Kate continued to manage the hotel. Their daughter, Mary, and her husband George Fleming took over when Kate passed away in 1923. It is unclear how long the hotel operated and the building is presently home to a restaurant and other businesses.

The McMillan Building was completed by the father of Flagstaff, Thomas F. McMillan, in 1888. It is one of the many historic buildings in the city.

"McMillan Building 1887." The Historical Marker Database

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Located across the street from the Santa Fe Railroad Depot, the McMillan Building is a historic commercial building named after the father of Flagstaff, Thomas F. McMillan. McMillan was a successful sheep rancher who bought the partially completed building in 1888, a year after construction began. The structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a contributing property within Flagstaff's Railroad Historic District, which is also on the National Register. 


McMillan Building

This short drive through the heart of Flagstaff includes landmark buildings such as the Weatherford Hotel and the Church of the Nativity. 

Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado first introduced sheep to the Southwest in 1540. It is likely these sheep didn't survive but another explorer, Juan de Oñate, brought sheep into what is now New Mexico in 1598. The Navajo Indians probably pushed these sheep into northeastern Arizona in the early 1600s. It took another century before sheep were reintroduced to Arizona by Padre Eusebio Kino. This time, he brought breeding sheep and thereby established the sheep industry in the Southwest.The industry grew over the next couple of centuries so that by 1917 there were around 1.4 million sheep in Arizona. To reach other ranges in Arizona, sheepherders led flocks from the summer grazing grounds in the Colorado Plateau to the winter grazing grounds in Phoenix Basin and Central Arizona. A part of this journey was to cross a bridge that spanned the Verde River north of Phoenix (a replica bridge was built in 1989 and is open to pedestrians).Large numbers of Basque and other immigrants arrived in Arizona at the-turn-of-the century. They initially lived in hotels or boarding houses, like the Tourist Home, and maintained their language, customs and traditions. Among these was the game of handball, which they called Pilotaleku in the Basque language (it is "pelota" in Spanish). The pelota ball was small, hard and handmade using goatskin. Players either hit it with their hand or a sling that resembled a basket. Courts were near or next to the hotel or boarding house. Handball is remains a popular sport today.Among the Basque who immigrated to America were members of the Auza and Manterola families, who were sheepherders in the Pyrenees Mountains. They became successful and their descendants continue to sheepherding today, although the industry has been in decline.It is not apparent when the Tourist Home stopped operating as a boarding house but it was left vacant for four decades and fell into disrepair (it was, in fact, condemned). After a substantial renovation effort, the current owners opened the cafe in October 2014.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, sheepherding was a thriving industry in Arizona. Immigrants from Europe, including many from the Basque region of northern Spain and southern France, traveled to Arizona (and other states) to work as sheepherders and laborers. Remnants of Basque history remain today in Flagstaff at this location, which features a historic building, the Tourist Home, and the adjacent site where a Basque handball court was once located. All that remains of the court is the wall at the rear of the site; it is the only one remaining in Arizona and one of the few still standing in the country. The Tourist Home, which operated as boarding house for Basque sheepherders, and the court were built by Basque natives Jesus Garcia and his mother in 1926. The building is now home to a cafe of the same name and the court area now serves as a seating area. A historical marker plaque describe the site is affixed to the wall of the building directly north of the court space.

Basque Handball Court & Tourist Home Building

The church was built by its first congregation, Glad Tidings Baptist Church, which was established in 1926. They held their first services in a chapel train car that traveled around to neighboring towns. In Flagstaff, the car initially stopped next to the lumber mill in the west side of the town before stopping at a few other locations in the coming years. It was used until either 1931 or 1932. At that point, the congregation moved into the former Seventh Day Adventist church building and remained there until they erected First Baptist Church in 1940. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

The historic First Baptist Church, now called Flagstaff Christian Fellowship, is significant as the only church in the city built using two local types of volcanic rock—malpais rock and Moenkopi sandstone. It was built in 1939 and designed in the Gothic Revival style, featuring a steeply pitched roof, buttresses, a steeple that houses a bell, and Gothic-arched main entrance with stained glass above the doors. The Moenkopi sandstone trims the window sills, buttress caps, the entryway, and the cornerstone. The interior features attractive oak scissor trusses. 

First Baptist Church

The city of Flagstaff grew around a water source called Antelope Spring. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad built the first railroad to reach Flagstaff in 1882 and used a box car as its first depot. It erected the first depot building in 1883, which is just down the road. The company, which was often referred to simply as the Santa Fe Railroad, built this second, larger passenger depot in 1926. At that time, the previous passenger station became the freight depot. Over time, the city grew and became an important economic center for the region, and it also serves as a tourism destination owing to its history and natural beauty and proximity to the Grand Canyon. The city assumed ownership of the depot in 1992 and renovated it in 1994 and the building has been home to the visitor center since that time.

Constructed by the Santa Fe Railroad in 1926, this historic depot in downtown Flagstaff is listed on the Register of Historic Places and is also a contributing property of the Railroad Addition Historic District. Now called Flagstaff Station, the building continues to operate as a passenger depot for Amtrak and also houses the Flagstaff Visitor Center. In terms of architecture, the depot is a good example of Tudor Revival architecture and resembles a residential building. 

Santa Fe Railroad Depot

John W. Weatherford was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1859 and spent his childhood in Weatherford, Texas. As a young man, he raised cattle in New Mexico and then worked as supply agent for mining camps in Tombstone, Arizona and in Mexico. He finally made his way to Flagstaff in 1886. He tried a few occupations including becoming a saloon keeper and running a livery stable. Eventually he found success selling men's clothing. He also served as justice of the peace from 1897 to 1898.In 1897, after fires destroyed much of the town, the city required new buildings to be constructed with brick. Weatherford erected a two-story brick structure in 1898; a general store occupied the first floor he and his family lived on the second floor. The next year, he decided to expand the building and convert it into the hotel. His recognized that, with the Grand Canyon being only 80 miles away (it became a national park in 1919) and reached by train, tourism would increase in Flagstaff. The Weatherford remained the city's premier hotel for many years. It would later become home to a theater, billiard hall, restaurant, dormitory during World War II, and a radio station. It was used for other purposes as well. Weatherford impacted Flagstaff in other ways as well. He built the Telephone Exchange building (which is directly next to the hotel) and the Opera House which is now the Orpheum Theater. He also spearheaded the effort to build a road the San Francisco Peaks and played a large role in establishing what would is now Northern Arizona University. He died in Phoenix in 1934. The hotel building gradually fell into disrepair and was under threat of demolition in 1974. Fortunately, the current owners bought it at that time and have continuously restored and maintained it ever since.

The Weatherford Hotel is one of the best-known landmarks in Flagstaff. It is named after its builder, local businessman John W. Waterford, who opened it on January 1st, 1900. The three-story brick building, which stands prominently in the heart of downtown Flagstaff, features a third-story balcony that curves around the southeast corner of the building, a cone-shaped cupola, and an oriel window (a bay window that projects from a wall) on the third floor. The building also houses three pubs and grills and is a popular wedding and event venue. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. In its early years, a number of famous people stayed here including William Randolph Hearst and Theodore Roosevelt.

Weatherford Hotel

Tourism increased in Arizona during the early 20th century, particularly because of the Grand Canyon, which became a national park in 1919. In the mid-1920s, the residents of Flagstaff collectively agreed that a new hotel should be built to accommodate the influx of tourists in the city, which is about 80 miles away from the park. There were hotels but they were outdated. The new hotel was initially called Community Hotel, but a young girl is credited with choosing Monte Vista as the name (it means "mountain view" in Spanish) in a contest. The Monte Vista opened on New Years Day, 1927.There are a number of interesting aspects about the hotel. When it opened, it hosted a radio station run by Mary Costigan, who, in 1927, was the second woman in the world to be awarded a broadcasting license. She arrived in Flagstaff to help her brother, John Weatherford (builder of the Weatherford Hotel and the Opera House, which is now the Orpheum Theater), to run the Weatherford Hotel, which was built in 1900. She eventually became the manager of the hotel after John became ill. Soon after she acquired her radio license in 1927, she created a radio station (KFXY) in the back of the Opera House. Two years later she relocated to the station to the Monte Vista and hosted a three-hour show every day.Another notable fact about the hotel is that it sits above a network of tunnels allegedly built by Chinese immigrants. The tunnels extend all the say to Northern Arizona University. Several buildings including the Monte Vista and the Weatherford Hotel are connected to the tunnels. It is believed that the Chinese immigrants, who were accused of starting a large fire in the early 1900s, built the tunnels to move around the city to avoid harassment. Today, the tunnels are used for storage and piping. However, many interesting items have been found in the large spaces of the tunnels that indicate the activities that occurred in them including opium dens, gambling, and moonshine distilleries. During prohibition, a newspaper publishing house was located in the hotel but it actually operated as a speakeasy and bootlegging operation. The police discovered and shut it down in 1931 but it did reopen in 1933 after prohibition ended. Movie celebrities stayed in the hotel during the 1940s and 1950s when western films were popular and were filmed in Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon. A scene from the movie "Casablanca" was filmed in one of the hotel's rooms. When John Wayne stayed here in the late 1950s, he reportedly had a brief encounter with a friendly ghost. Over the years, many guests and staff have reported having paranormal experiences at the hotel.

Hotel Monte Vista is a historic hotel located in the heard of downtown Flagstaff. It was erected in 1927 and has remained a popular place to say ever since. A number of politicians and celebrities such as Harry Truman, John Wayne, Bob Hope and Michael J. Fox have stayed here over the years, and it is considered one of the most haunted hotels in the country. In terms of design, the brick building features arched windows, decorative brickwork, windows with small balconies, and some windows surrounded by what appears to be decorative terra cotta ornamentation. A large "Hotel Monte Vista" sign stands prominently on top of the south west corner of the building. The hotel is also notable for being publicly owned until the early 1960s. It is a contributing property of the Railroad Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  

Hotel Monte Vista

The Ice House is significant because of its role in contributing to early commercial growth in Flagstaff, Arizona. The Ice House was the first commercial building constructed in Flagstaff after World War II, and the largest of its kind after the post office was built ten years previously. It was a groundbreaking achievement for the Babbitt Brothers who were beginning to make their mark on Flagstaff’s economy, and quickly vaulted them into the prominent ranks of local developers. The Ice House’s primary operations revolved around ice manufacturing, storage, and sales. It became an important stopping point for trucks transporting goods across Route 66 and for trains passing through town. Truckers and train engineers would stop to load their trucks or railcars with ice before continuing their trips across eastern Arizona or across the hot desert of western Arizona and southern California. In this sense, the Ice House served as a regional hub for ice-related services. The Ice House was important locally as it helped guide Flagstaff’s commercial development and it also impacted interstate commerce.  Archeological evidence suggests that people inhabited the region in and around present-day Flagstaff, Arizona thousands of years ago, but itself dates to 1881 when it was officially named. In the mid-1800s, ranchers looking for places to set up ranches and homesteads settled around the San Francisco Peaks – the mountain range that Flagstaff is nestled beneath. As the railroad and lumber industries grew during that time, so did Flagstaff. What started as a construction camp quickly turned into a bustling community of hard laborers and lumbermen. By 1910, Flagstaff had the reputation of being a lumber town, harvesting trees from the vast ponderosa pine forest surrounding the budding town.  The Babbitt Brothers, five in total, were among the new breed of businessmen arriving in Flagstaff in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They immediately carved out a niche for themselves first in the ranching industry and then in retail merchandising. They firmly established a name for themselves in the business sector, owning trading posts, a bank, a meat-packing plant, a mortuary, an auto dealership, and an ice plant (the Ice House). Several of the buildings the brothers had constructed are still in use today in downtown Flagstaff, one of the most notable being the Ice House.  World War II was a turning point for Flagstaff. It turned a small lumber and railroad community into a flourishing municipality. The war stimulated the local economy as many local companies and service industries were given a tremendous boost. The population in Flagstaff exploded in the late 1940s, and the sleepy mountain town emerged as a player on the national stage. Tourism was up, the lumber industry was still humming, home building increased, and new businesses were lining the streets. Downtown Flagstaff in particular was thriving, and new businesses were sprouting up in response to the town’s economic and population boom – the Ice House was among those businesses.  In 1902, David Babbitt, one of the prominent Babbitt Brothers who are considered by state and regional historians to be the principal economic founders of Flagstaff, in one of his diary entries asked himself the question: “Can we make ice?”. The answer was an empathetic “yes”, as two years later the Babbitt Brothers Trading Company built an ice storage warehouse in downtown Flagstaff. With visions of producing ice on a more grandiose scale, the Babbitt Brothers razed the original ice warehouse in 1931 and operated an ice manufacturing plant in a nearby location. The output of ice at this manufacturing facility drastically rose from five-hundred-seventy-two tons in of ice in 1941 to one-thousand-six-hundred tons in 1946. The Babbitt Brothers quickly realized that the supply of ice could not keep up with the burgeoning demand. In response, they began construction on the Babbitt Ice Plant, better known as the Ice House, to ensure that regional demand for ice would be met. Even more, the Brothers wanted to establish a regional hub that included the Flagstaff, Williams, and Grand Canyon vicinities, and to take a “chip” out of the ice-making market.   The Ice House was completed in the summer of 1947and had three times the freezing capacity, and five times the storage capacity (five-hundred tons), of the first ice storage warehouse operated by the Babbitt Brothers. The immense structure served two main functions: ice manufacturing/storage and ice sales. Also, the warehouse provided twenty-thousand square feet of floor space for groceries and roughly five-thousand cubic feet of cold storage.

The Ice House is a massive, one-of-a-kind commercial building located in historic downtown Flagstaff, Arizona. The building is a one-story structure, with the lone second story on the southeast corner supporting an antiquated ICE sign no longer in use. Although the neighborhood surrounding the Ice House has experienced several aesthetic and cosmetic changes over the past several decades, the Ice House generally appears the same as it did at the time of its construction. Once a warehouse and ice plant, the Ice House now serves as an office building for governmental, legal, and county professionals. To this day, the building maintains sufficient integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association to convey its important role in the growth of post-World War II commerce in Flagstaff. 

The Ice House

The first Church of the Nativity was built in 1888. At the time, Flagstaff did not have Catholic priest but the Catholic residents decided to raise money and build a church anyway (after having received permission to do so from the bishop). A year later, the church was completed south of the train tracks and a visiting priest celebrated the first mass on Christmas day. The congregation eventually moved to another location north of the train tracks in 1911 (it is not clear if another church was built or if the congregation simply relocated to a new building). By the late 1920s the size of the congregation was large enough to justify building the present church building. The congregation hired Los Angeles architect Emmet G. Martin to design it. Apparently, parishioners themselves collected the malpais volcanic rock for the building, which reduced construction costs by $10,000 to $15,000 (the project cost a total of $65,000). Martin designed the church, which was officially named Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Chapel, to resemble a fortress to reflect the rugged surrounding mountain terrain. The stained glass windows were created by a master craftsman from Los Angeles in the Munich style. The tower no longer houses the bell, which was manufactured in 1889 and weighs around 1,100 lbs.; it is currently at the San Francisco de Asís Mission Church.

Known as the "pink church," the Church of the Nativity stands prominently on the corner of Cherry Avenue and Beaver Street. It was erected in 1930 and is a fine example of Gothic architecture, featuring buttresses, stained glass arched windows, an ornate bell tower with cast stone tracery, gargoyles, statues and other decorative elements. The church is not currently home to a Catholic congregation but is part of the the San Francisco de Asís Mission Church parish here in Flagstaff and is open to the public for special events such as First Friday ArtWalk. It is also available for weddings and funerals, and in recent years Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church has held services here. 

Church of the Nativity

John M. Clark was born in 1871 in New Hampshire and relocated to Flagstaff with his family as a boy. As a young man, he moved to Yuma where he eventually became Captain of the Guards at the Yuma Territorial Prison, which is now a museum. In 1895 he became Deputy Marshall and moved to Tuscon, where he met his future wife, Agnes (they married in 1905), and got into business. Clark also served in the First Territorial Legislature and played a central role in helping Arizona achieve statehood. He and Agnes arrived in Flagstaff in 1906. He opened a clothing store with his brother, Charles, on Leroux Street. Clark remained involved in Arizona's political arena after it became a state in 1912. He bought the land on which the home now stands in 1910. It was next to the large 360-acre tract of land this father, Asa, had owned. The city bought the southern half of that property in 1922 to build Flagstaff High School (which is located a block to the west) and a park. Clark lived in the house until he passed away in 1926. Agnes remained until she sold it in 1944. It was a private home until 1976 when Mount Cavalry Lutheran Church bought it and used it as a fellowship hall and meeting place. It appears the house was converted into a restaurant around 1984.

Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the J.M. Clark House is significant for its Craftsman-style architecture and association with its namesake, John Milton Clark. The home, which Clark built in 1912, is also notable for its use of locally sourced volcanic rock. Other interesting features of the home include overhanging eaves with exposed rafter ends, a stuccoed exterior, broad gable roofs, and a three-bay porch supported by four columns. Clark was a prominent figure in Flagstaff in the early 20th century, becoming a successful business owner and helping shape local regional politics. The home is now a restaurant called Josephine's Modern American Bistro.

Historic Downtown Flagstaff Arizona Driving Tour

McMillan Building

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Backstory and Context

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