Some Sedona History

We drove 8 hours to Sedona today and had an uneventful trip (thank goodness). I’ve learned a lot about Sedona from all of the reading on the Internet and from a book called, “Sedona: The Essential Guidebook” by Dennis Andres that I picked out from Amazon.com. Sedona is located in the Oak Creek Canyon area in a transition zone between the high, snowy country of the Colorado Plateau and the vast, dry Sonoran Desert. It is considered “high desert.”

According to Andres, Sedona got its name in 1902 from Missouri brothers that settled in Oak Creek Canyon named Ellsworth and T. Carl Schnebly. When writing to the U.S. Postal Service to petition for a town post office, T. Carl suggested names of “Oak Creek Crossing” or “Schnebly Station” but the USPS wanted something shorter that would fit on a cancellation stamp. As a result, Ellsworth suggested they use T. Carl’s wife’s name: "Sedona."

Before the first settlers, though, the Native American people resided in the area more than 5,000 years ago. They survived by gathering nuts and berries in the forests as well as hunting wild game. There were acorns, prickly pears, and pine nuts to collect and quail, rabbits, and deer to hunt. Most likely, these people moved with the seasons, between the red rocks and the Colorado Plateau to the north. About 2,000 years ago, the people adopted farming and settled there.

The Native American people are known as the Sinagua (sin-a-wa), the word coming from the Spanish words “sin” (without) and “agua” (water).I hope we’ll get to visit the Sinagua ruins of Palatki with 12,000-year-old petroglyphs or Montezuma Castle (neither a castle nor associated with Montezuma) with its cliff dwellings.