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Like the rest of the
vast
West,
Williams was first home to many
Native American Tribes for thousands of years. Later Spanish
explorers would first see the Grand Canyon while searching for the
Seven Cities of Cibola in the mid 1500s. One can only imagine
their amazement when stumbling upon that massive canyon, after having
traveled hundreds of miles over nothing but desert sand.
In the early
nineteenth century, mountain men began to push west in search of the
plentiful game, when the fur trade was at an all time high. One
of these men was William Sherley Williams. "Old Bill,” which he was most often called, wandered all over the
western states as a trapper and a scout on the
Santa Fe Trail. Soon,
other men in search of gold began to roam the area. After the
Civil War, land speculators, anticipating the construction of the
westward bound railroad, began to make claims on numerous areas in
northern
Arizona, including what would
soon become Williams. Attracting sheep and cattle ranchers, the
settlement was founded in 1876, taking the name of the famous mountain
man, Bill
Williams. In 1881 the first post office was established and
on September 1, 1882 the railroad finally arrived. In no time at
all,
Williams became the shipping center for the nearby ranching and
lumber industries.
In the beginning,
Williams,
like so many other towns of the
Old
West, gained a reputation as a rough and rowdy settlement filled
with saloons,
brothels, gambling houses and opium dens. Restricted by a town
ordinance to Railroad Avenue’s "Saloon
Row,” it didn’t stop the numerous cowboys, railroad men and
lumberjacks from frequenting these many businesses.
Even back in those days, early tourism
began when people traveled to the Grand Canyon via buckboards and
stagecoaches.
In 1901, the Santa Fe Railroad extended
its line from
Williams
to the Grand Canyon making the town the true "Gateway to the Grand Canyon." It was also in this year that a devastating fire swept
through town, taking with it, some 36 businesses, including two
hotels, plus ten homes in less than an hour. Within days,
Williams
began to rebuild and formed a new fire district.
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