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is a town in Yavapai County, Arizona, United States. The estimated population of the town was 3,613 according to the 2005 census estimates. The Dewey-Humboldt area was a census-designated place (CDP) at the 2000 census, at which time its population was 6,295.
Dewey-Humboldt was incorporated on December 20, 2004 from the existing unincorporated towns of
, located adjacent to one another in the Agua Fria River Valley, 15 miles east of Prescott.
The Dewey area was settled around 1863 by pioneer prospector, rancher and Indian-fighter King Woolsey (1832–1879), who founded the
, then better known as "Woolsey Valley". Apache raids made life difficult for the early American settlers. The stage station and post office nearby was also named Agua Fria. By the early 1870s water diversions were being used to irrigate an extensive area of corn and other crops. The ruins of Woolsey's ranch house can still be seen between the old Black Canyon Highway and the Agua Fria River about one mile north of Humboldt.
post office closed in 1895. When a new post office opened in 1898, the community was renamed
, probably to honor Admiral Dewey's great victory that year at the Battle of Manila, but perhaps after a pioneer settler. Farming continued in a small portion of the area until 2006 when the last working farm was sold to developers. Today Dewey is a low-density residential area.
Humboldt was also settled in the early 1860s. The town was originally named
after the company that owned the local smelting operation. The town was renamed
in 1905 to honor Baron Alexander von Humboldt, who had predicted more than a century earlier that the Bradshaw Mountains would become a rich mining area By 1907 the population had reached 1,000. With two daily trains, business in the town boomed and the city decided to showcase their development by hosting a Labor Day celebration that year. The celebration featuring a parade on Main Street became an annual tradition, now organized by the Agua Fria Chamber of Commerce and held on the last Saturday in September.
to close temporarily. After World War I, the smelter and mine closed again, and by 1930 the population of Humboldt had dwindled to 300. Humboldt had a second but smaller boom in 1934 when the mine reopened and produced $100 million in lead and zinc before its closure in 1968. The mine tailings are presently being reprocessed into iron-rich
fertilizer. There have been questions raised about the lead and arsenic content of the fertilizer, but the company maintains its product is harmless. "The lead and arsenic are in forms that cannot escape into the environment. You can eat them and they'll pass right through you," said Rob Morgan, Ironite's executive vice president and chief operating officer. "They're not harmful." However, the United States Environmental Protection Agency? has recently posted a cautionary statement, warning that potentially harmful amounts of arsenic could be released from use of Ironite. Ironite is banned in Canada.
The railroad track which served the mine was removed in 1971. Today in Humboldt, a lone smelter smokestack remains overlooking the historic buildings on Main Street.