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Locals recall memories on Arizona's birthday

Joe Meehan and Les Roe rang the Emerson School bell at Flagstaff Pioneer Museum 100 times to mark Arizona's 100th birthday Tuesday.

The museum is hosting a day-long birthday party with a new Centennial exhibit by NAU history students.

Meehan, curator of Arizona Historical Society’s Pioneer Museum, says in 1912, Flagstaff was a booming frontier town with a population around 2,000.

“The lumber yard was up and running. It was growing, the university was here, the observatory was here,” he says.

Elizabeth Wallace Dobrinski was born in Flagstaff just 12 years after Arizona became a state.

Her father was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and one of the first forest rangers in what is now Coconino National Forest.

 “I remember the snake dances on the reservation, more about being stuck either in mud or in sand, than I do the dances," she says.

Memories of Northern Arizona’s early days will be shared throughout the day at the pioneer museum with festivities continuing until 6 o’clock.