Editing Oracle, Arizona (section)

===Alternative history===
On January 1, 2017, in the ''[[Arizona Daily Star]]'' newspaper, historian David Leighton challenged the accepted history of the town of Oracle:

He wrote that Albert Weldon who was born about 1840 in New Brunswick, Canada, traveled on his uncle Capt. A.D. Wood's ship Oracle around [[Cape Horn]] at the tip of South America and arrived in California between 1857 and 1860. Weldon enlisted as a private in Company E, 5th California Infantry, of the Union Army, in 1861. This unit was attached to the California Column and soon marched to [[Tucson]] where Weldon was posted at a nearby stage station before moving east and eventually being honorably discharged in Mesilla New Mexico in 1864.

After his military service he returned to [[California]] and was involved in mining and also lumber. In 1876 he returned to [[Arizona]]. Within a couple of years he found a partner in Irishman Jimmie Lee and both men traveled northeast of Tucson into the Santa Catalina Mountains in search of precious metal. Soon he found a mining claim and named it Oracle in honor of his uncle's ship.

The ship Oracle was built under the supervision of Captain Charles E. Ranlett and was constructed for the shipbuilding firm Chapman & Flint of Maine. It was launched in 1853 and was a temperance ship (one that didn't allow alcohol aboard) and sailed to ports across the globe including Melbourne, Australia and Shanghai, China.  It was captained by Weldon's uncle for several years.

Weldon was soon joined by Alexander McKay, an immigrant from [[Scotland]] who located two mining claims named Christmas and New Years because of the days they were discovered. McKay also built a one-room house, the first in the area, and from it, the village grew. When it was time for a post office to be named, Oracle was the name eventually chosen.

Leighton stated that the town of Oracle takes its name from the Oracle Mine which took its name from the ship Oracle and that he believes the ship took its name from an oracle{{snd}}a shrine dedicated to a particular god where people went to consult a priest or priestess in times of trouble or uncertainty{{snd}}called the Temple of Apollo at [[Didyma]] in present-day Aydin Province, Turkey, not the oracle at Delphi, Greece believed by some to be the origin of the name. He also explained that there were two ships named Oracle made by the same shipbuilder, the second one being launched in 1876 but that this later ship wasn't the boat that Weldon traveled on, as some sources have said.<ref>[http://tucson.com/news/local/street-smarts-how-oracle-road-came-to-be-named-for/article_f3bf19c2-e2b0-5192-92c6-f7dabe3204a0.html  David Leighton, "Street Smarts: How Oracle Road came to be named for a fast ship with a teetotaling crew," ''Arizona Daily Star'', Jan. 1, 2017]</ref>