High on a hill above old downtown Prescott sits the Arizona Pioneers’ Home, a rambling multi-level building with an eclectic, homey feel that no modern care facility can fake. The Northern Arizona author behind our Prescott research first saw the inside of it around 2010, covering hospice shifts, and remembers climbing the many steps and being shown through halls that were large, atmospheric, and a little confusing.
Years later came the discovery that floored everyone: one of those halls once housed Big Nose Kate. Doc Holliday’s companion. Friend of the Earps. A woman straight out of the wildest chapters of southern Arizona’s story, and she did not just pass through Prescott. She lived out her final years here, and she is buried in town.
Who was Big Nose Kate?
Her real name was Mary Katherine Horony Cummings, born in Hungary in 1849. Photographs show a dark-eyed woman with strong, soulful features and, yes, a slightly prominent nose. She is widely described as Doc Holliday’s common-law wife, though the two were famous for quarreling as hard as they rode together.
Kate was educated, and by most accounts she chose her work in the frontier’s oldest profession because it gave her independence on her own terms. She outlived nearly everyone in her story, reaching 90 years old. Her final act might be her best: as a resident of the Pioneers’ Home, she petitioned the governor on behalf of her fellow residents, spoke out on living conditions, and spent her own money on everyday comforts for neighbors who had none.
What is the Tucson connection?
Kate belongs to the southern Arizona canon: Doc Holliday, the Earps, the saloons and rail towns of the old territory that our Tucson ghost tour walks through every evening. The surprise is that her story does not end down south. It ends quietly in Prescott, in a hillside home for aging pioneers, two hundred miles from the legend she helped make. Two of Arizona’s great story towns share her, and both towns are better for it.
Is the Pioneers’ Home haunted?
The reports say yes. Staff and residents have described footsteps echoing through the historic halls when everyone should be asleep, doors opening on their own, and televisions and radios flipping on and off at will. Anyone who has walked those old hallways understands why the stories stick. The tales those walls could tell would fill a book, and Prescott has a way of filling books; see just how haunted Prescott is for the rest of the roster.
Questions people ask
Where is Big Nose Kate buried?
In Prescott, Arizona, where she spent her last years as a resident of the Arizona Pioneers’ Home. Plenty of visitors expect to find her down south with the rest of the legend, which is exactly what makes the Prescott tie surprising.
Was Big Nose Kate really with Doc Holliday?
By most accounts, yes, as his longtime companion and common-law wife. The pair quarreled often and reconciled often, and her version of events survived him by more than four decades.
Walk the towns that share her
Kate’s Arizona runs from the southern saloons to a Prescott hillside, and the Prescott end of the story walks well after dark. The Prescott Ghost Tour covers the old capital’s outlaws, madams, and restless hotels nightly at 7 PM for $29. Come hear which frontier names ended up in the mountain town, and which ones never left.
