Honoring the

Granite Mountain Hotshots

June 30, 2013

19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots were killed fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire. They were Prescott’s crew, the first municipal hotshot crew in the country, based out of the Prescott Fire Department, made up of men who lived here, raised families here, and spent their nights off in this town.

Nineteen of Prescott’s own. Some of them stood at this bar.

They Were Regulars. That is not a marketing line. It’s a fact that Matt’s has been the town’s hometown bar for over sixty years and the reason the loss landed the way it did here. Not just for us, but for the whole community.

We are not the memorial. The memorial is at Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial State Park, and the Learning and Tribute Center in Prescott tells their story properly, in their own words and their families’. We’re a bar that misses them.

Prescott Strong

In the weeks after the fire, Matt and Marco did the only thing they knew how to do. They closed Montezuma Street and threw a block party for the families.

It was called Prescott Strong. The whole Row turned out. So did the town, and a good part of the state. It raised more than $202,000 for the families of the nineteen, money that went directly to the people who needed it, from a street full of people who wanted to help and didn’t know how else to do it.

It remains the single thing this bar is proudest of.

How to Support the Families and the Memorial

• Granite Mountain Hotshots Learning and Tribute Center: Prescott’s dedicated space for the crew’s story.

• Granite Mountain Hotshots Memorial State Park: the trail to the site and the observation deck, near Yarnell, Arizona

• The Eric Marsh Foundation for Wildland Firefighters: supports wildland firefighters and their families

• Prescott Fire Department