David F. Myrick
David F. Myrick was known as an outstanding Western historian, with a particular interest in railroads. He worked for many years in the financial offiace of a major western railroad and lived in San Francisco. He passed away in September 2011.
A native of Santa Barbara, he received the first impetus of his interest in Arizona from his father, who attended the Evans Ranch School in Mesa when Arizona was still a Territory. Subsequently, Mr. Myrick made many visits to Arizona and came to know the people, the towns and institutions, and the varied landscape of Arizona, along with its history.
His many railroad books and pamphlets include the first three volumes of the Railroads of Arizona series. Volume 1, The Southern Roads (1975), Volume 2, Phoenix and the Central Roads (1980), and Volume 3, Clifton, Morenci and Metcalf: Rails and Copper Mines (1984), are all out of print at the moment. He also published two volumes about the railroads of Nevada and eastern California, and a volume on railroads of New Mexico, and wrote local histories of San Francisco's Telegraph Hill and Santa Barbara's Montecito.
Mr. Myrick's Volume 4 of the Railroads of Arizona series, The Santa Fe Route, was published by Signature Press in 1998. He continued to work on the concluding volumes of the series, which cover the secondary lines north of Phoenix as well as the mining and logging railroads. The first of these, Volume 5, Santa Fe to Phoenix, was published in November, 2001; the second, Volume 6, A history of Jerome and the Northern Roads is now available.