How Halloween Came to Territorial Arizona, 1885–1917

Not an anomaly. This is a short social history of a holiday, read through territorial Arizona’s newspapers. The quotations below were checked against the Library of Congress page scans (OCR) on 4 October 2026.

Halloween wasn’t always an Arizona habit. Around the territory’s newspapers you can watch it arrive, turn rowdy and then get tamed, all within about thirty years.

1885: explaining it to readers

On 7 November 1885, Yuma’s Arizona Sentinel told readers that “Last Saturday was Hallow Eve, a night largely celebrated in the East.” It described young people who “go from house to house” knocking on doors with cabbage heads, ringing doorbells and changing gates and signs. The writer remembered doing it himself “way back in our eastern home.” The paper plainly assumed many readers hadn’t seen it done.

1895: Phoenix catches on

Ten years later the Arizona Republican reported Halloween as a local event: “Last night was Halloween and the occasion was utilized by the youthful in pranks of every kind. Signs were transposed and gates exchanged.” Some people also found unflattering notes pinned to their coat-tails.

1901: Tombstone’s sign swap

The Tombstone Epitaph of 3 November 1901 headlined it “HALLOWEEN DEVILTRY.” By morning, the paper said, “the lawyer of yesterday” was dealing in general merchandise, the grocer “was practicing law,” and the undertaker’s sign had gone somewhere else too. Beer kegs were stacked into pyramids and a barber’s pole was buried under hoops and barrels. The verdict was forgiving: the boys “refrained from destroying property.”

1903–1910: masks, socials and haunted houses

In October 1903, Clifton’s Copper Era announced “a sheet and pillow-case mask ball” for Halloween evening, with “Masks raised at the door.” In 1909 the Bisbee Y.M.C.A. planned a large Halloween social (this one is read through OCR only). By 1910 the papers were describing parties with themes. In Safford, the Graham Guardian listed refreshments of “goblins food, phantom chips, witches brew” and “ghost sweetmeats,” and gave a prize to the guest judged “the most deceptive ghost.” In Winslow, twenty guests at a Halloween party found that “The haunted house was visited and the old witch and her den was one of the attractions.”

1917: a lost mare

A modern retelling says that boys at Lehi, near Mesa, let horses out as a Halloween prank in 1917. The only item the ledger has found is a classified ad in the Arizona Republican of 4 November 1917. It offers a $10 reward for a lost dark mare, signed by G. E. Thompson of Lehi. The ad doesn’t mention Halloween or a prank, and we haven’t found a news story that does. A different ad in the same column does: a white iron bunny “TAKEN from porch Hallowe’en night.” So Halloween pranks were real enough that week, but we don’t treat the mare as one of them.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand

For comparison, New Zealand papers in 1895 treated Halloween mainly as a Scottish occasion. The Thames Star advertised a Burns Club Halloween ball, and at a Dunedin Burns Club gathering a speaker joked that some people didn’t know what Halloween meant. (These two items were checked through the DigitalNZ API.)

What it adds up to

Heritage Square Phoenix’s research historian, Heather Roberts, reads the arc as a familiar American one. A borrowed custom became a night of pranks, and communities then channeled it into supervised parties and haunted houses. The dated items support that reading. Her 2017 article first gathered most of the Arizona items, and we’ve now checked them on the original pages.

This file doesn’t cover Día de los Muertos, which is a separate tradition with its own history.

Ledger status

Marked folklore (social history). Seven Arizona papers across 32 years each describe their own town’s Halloween, and all but the Bisbee item are checked on the page. The 1917 Lehi “prank” isn’t established.

If you want an October outing, two state parks run their own events: the Riordan Mansion adults’ storytelling tours (Oct 28–30) and Fort Verde’s lantern walk (Oct 31). Check the park sites for details.

Sources

• Arizona Sentinel (Yuma), 7 Nov 1885, p.3 — loc.gov
• Arizona Republican (Phoenix), 1 Nov 1895, p.5 — loc.gov
• Tombstone Epitaph, 3 Nov 1901 (Sunday edition), p.1, “Halloween Deviltry” — loc.gov
• The Copper Era (Clifton), 22 Oct 1903, p.3 — loc.gov
• Graham Guardian (Safford), 4 Nov 1910, p.1 — loc.gov
• Winslow Mail, 5 Nov 1910, p.1 — loc.gov
• Arizona Republican, 4 Nov 1917, p.5 (classified ads) — loc.gov
• Heather Roberts, “Parties and Pranks: A Turn-of-the-Century Halloween Hullabaloo,” The Square PHX (Heritage Square Phoenix), 1 Nov 2017 — thesquarephx.org
• The Square PHX, “Haunted Houses” — thesquarephx.org
• Bisbee Daily Review, 5 Oct 1909, p.6 (OCR) — newspapers.com
• Thames Star, 30 Oct 1895 — paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
• Otago Daily Times, 1 Nov 1895 — paperspast.natlib.govt.nz