After the week we just had, some of us could really use a drink. Apparently, the residents of territorial Tucson were no different. Well over 200 saloons came and went in the Old Pueblo during the half-century leading up to statehood in 1912 and statewide prohibition in 1915, according to a new book on the subject.
At the peak of the early booze business, sometime around 1890, Tucson was home to more than 30 drinking establishments, serving a population of fewer than 8,000 residents. “The reason there were so many bars in Tucson is there weren't a lot of things to do for single men,” said Homer Thiel , a historical archaeologist with the Tucson-based consulting firm Desert Archaeology. Thiel has just authored a comprehensive history of local watering holes during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“Territorial Saloons of Tucson” spans the period from March 1856, when the Mexican military withdrew from post-Gadsden Purchase Arizona, to Jan. 1, 1915, the start of the state’s 18-year ban on alcohol. Historical archaeologist Homer Thiel leans on the bar next to a late-19th-century liquor bottle at Hotel Congress in Tucson on Thursday.
Thiel just published a comprehensive history of territorial saloons in Tucson between 1856 and 1915. Thiel uses census records, newspaper accounts and other source material from that time to chronicle 247 different saloons. He said none of those businesses survived Prohibition, and the buildings that once housed them are long gone, to.