With the arrival of the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad in 1881 Holbrook, located at the junction of the Rio Puerco and Little Colorado River in northern Arizona would soon become one of the wildest cow towns in the West.
By 1887, the town had about two hundred and fifty residents. Businesses included five or six rowdy saloons. Contrary to popular myth, Holbrook never boasted a “Bucket of Blood” saloon. That was a woeful sobriquet given by the cowboys to any rough and tumble drinking establishment.
The socially elite of the town included the wide gamut of colorful frontier types: filles de joie, gamblers, sheepherders, cowboys and railroaders.
Holbrook in those days was, to paraphrase those immortal words of Mark Twain, “no place for a Presbyterian………”so very few remained Presbyterians, or any other religion for that matter. In fact, the town had the unique distinction of being the only county seat in the United States that had no church until 1913. And that was only after Mrs. Sidney Sapp cajoled her husband into organizing a building fund to build one.
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