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Haunting Of  Maricopa Hall

There are various, numerous, and continued reported sightings of ghosts, apparitions, encounters, and other unexplainable things that go 'Bump in the Night' and often during the day over the years around almost all of the University of Arizona campus that is located in Tucson Arizona U.S.A.

The university campus contains many classic old brick buildings built in the late 1800's and early 1900's time periods. On the University of Arizona campus and the ground under which it was built over the top of, many experiences with the supernatural have been reported since even before the college had originally opened to mainly high school students as the Arizona College of Mines in 1885.

One of the more enduring and documented of the University of Arizona's continuing campus mystery's is centered at and around the Maricopa Residence Hall building involving much more than just one ghostly misunderstood spirit from the past. One of the original reports has it that a very despondent female student sadly had killed herself there in Maricopa Hall very late one stormy dark and windy October 30th night.

Those circumstances surrounding her death involve the Maricopa Hall's original purpose which was as the designed private mansion by the then (6th) sixth University President Arthur Herbert Wilde in 1914 for use only by himself as the President of the University.

Sandy Mercer, a history major and former Maricopa Hall resident from Wisconsin, related that what she had found out was also based on the Maricopa dormitory hall being built on top of the site of a unusually bloody fight even for its time between two very higly spirited and rival local Tucson dance hall girls in the 1860's.

Diamond Lil

Diamond Lil who had worked more than her share of mining camps that dotted the landscape of Southern Arizona and Two Tooth Gertie had both been working in rival saloons located on Congress Street while both of the ladies were engaged in the very highly profitable and competitive business of  the time, "That of Mining the Miners." 

 Diamond Lil always carried a small Pearl Handled Smith & Wesson .32 caliber silver plated Derringer pistol in her garter, while Two Tooth Gertie learned to throw a knife lightning fast as a young kid working in the traveling circus, and always kept one in a hidden leather sheath that had been sewed into a special pocket very neatly concealed under her long flowing clothes.

Two Tooth Gertie

One night as both of the ladies were trying to separate a prospector-miner from his newly found gold while they were all at a meeting of the Tucson Vigilante Committee downtown.

It was just a matter of time before the sparks would inevitably fly between the two working ladies much like the hot burning cinders out of one of the  Southern Pacific locomotives smoke stacks as they regularly chugged belching steam and smoke into the Tucson Train Depot that was located downtown.

Upstanding Members of the

Tucson Vigilante Committee

Both dance hall girls soon stormed out of the meeting, and took to their small horse drawn wagons heading at a fast trot out east of town into what was then the open desert and formerly a Spanish Cattle Rancho, but is now located under the land the University of Arizona now currently sits on.

After a really heated bantering back and forth exchange of some words usually only spoken by frustrated uneducated drunken working men, Two Tooth Gertie suddenly reached under her dress and in an instant her knife found its mark in Diamond Lil's left upper shoulder.

Diamond Lil, a crack shot and just as quick with her reflexes, then fired once, the bullet first striking Two Tooth Gertie in the upper right eye and finally lodging deep into her brain.

As Two Tooth Gertie fell to the desert soil she began bleeding profusely, and in her final death rattle raspy voice Two Tooth Gertie murmured out putting a Curse on both Diamond Lil as well as the desert area she was laying on itself. By the end of her placing the curse Two Tooth Gertie had died right there on the sandy desert soil spot in which she had fatally fallen. 

Later, in the late 1870's when Tucson had been stripped of it's role as Arizona's capital, the Theiving 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature  alloted money only to build a college structure as a substitute.

Without land, a college being built stood less chance than a July snow storm in Tucson until four professional gamblers, saloon owners, and con artists along with every one of the dance hall and working girls in town had worked together to donate a large parcel of open desert and in the case of the lady's some of their take from the miners, cowboys, and area businessmen they had 'entertained' to make it happen.

Among those working lady's was none other than Diamond Lil.   

The Maricopa Hall mystery then fast forwards year's later to 1919 when the daughter of a wealthy Eastern Railroad Robber Baron attending the University of Arizona was engaged to be married. One night while visiting some of her friends she discovered her dashing prospective husband in bed with another man from town in what was an embarrassing moment.

The despondent girl quickly walked back through the dark night desert alone to campus that evening uncontrollably crying and sobbing along the way. She was found hanging from one of the bathroom ceiling gas pipes on what was then the dark and drafty 2nd floor of the then unfinished University of Arizona presidents mansion, now called Maricopa Hall, early on the next morning when the workmen began showing up.

The building that is now known as Maricopa Hall was first proposed, designed, and authorized to be built by the then 6th University of Arizona President, (1911-1914) Arthur Herbert Wilde in 1914 but health matters brought him an early retirement before it could be built.

The original two (2) story building was actually constructed a few years later between June 1918 and October 1920 right during the time World War 1 was raging over in Europe for the total amount of $174,666 dollars.

By 1921 an additional 3rd floor was added to the structure for the cost of $45,000 dollars. But for reasons known only to the 7th President 1914-1921 Rufus Bernard von Kleinsmid he adamantly and completely refused to ever set foot in the mansion again after an experience he would never talk about when walking by it very late one night after a meeting.

The building then sat empty gathering dust for some time until later when it was decided to slowly turn just one room at a time into rooms for college classes that required their being re-adapted for use as classrooms from the original design and purpose of the mansions construction.

To this very day many of the students, visitors, and employees at the university have reported seeing and or hearing the sobbing and crying ghostly apparition of a young girl when they either lived or worked in the old building hall or simply had just visited others in the structure there at night.

Maricopa Hall's basement is very often no joke for the faint of heart either, and it is known as a really, really, really scary place at many various times.

Countless students, maintenance workers, visitors, along with others have often reported hearing very strange and even bordering on the bizarre kinds of errie sounds coming from Maricopa Hall ever since the sad death of the very heart broken girl back in the year 1919.

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