Arizona's territorial capital before Phoenix took the title, Prescott sits high in the ponderosa pine country of the state's central highlands. Its community college was established by a county-wide vote in 1965, taught its first classes in 1969, and dedicated its Prescott campus in 1970 on a hundred acres that had once belonged to the frontier post of Fort Whipple. The Performance Hall serves the campus and the county together: student productions and faculty recitals in term time, and a presenting season of touring orchestras, chamber ensembles and music theatre for an audience drawn from across Yavapai County.