We've visited Sedona a number of times, enjoying it's beautiful red rocks, great restaurants and unique shops, but we've rarely taken the time to explore the history of Sedona. We were here for a full week, the weather was lovely, it was the perfect time to explore!
Our first stop was the Sedona Heritage Museum where the Jordan Family began a farm in the 1870s, eventually planting almost 1500 fruit (apple and peach) trees. By 1931 they had a one room cabin and a tractor shed and by 1937 they were the largest employer in the area. The Jordan's success brought the construction of the fruit packing shed in 1946, and a new car and another house addition in 1947.
The museum also had the first ever "teal" McDonald's Arches (c1993) to go along with Sedona's "natural decor"!
Along with the Jordan's farm buildings, the museum showcased the film history of the area as well. From the 1920s through the early 1960s Sedona's red rocks made an ideal setting for Western movies. In 1945, a movie set was constructed for John Wayne's film "Angel and the Badman", which featured a Telegraph Office. It was relocated to the Museum in 2014 and restored to it's 1945 movie prop condition. "The Call of the Canyon" statue by James Muir pays homage to the spirit of the settler in Oak Creek Canyon in the early part of the 20th century documented in Zane Grey's novel of the same name.
Nothing tells the history of a place like it's cemeteries. This small town has three! The oldest is the Schuerman Red Rock Cemetery started in 1893. The first soul buried on this part of the Schuerman property was that of their 5-year old daughter, Clara, who died in 1893 of cholera. Standing apart from the other graves, under a couple of stately juniper trees, one can see the simple gravestone marks a place that you can imagine might have been a favorite of a young girl, with its magnificent view of Cathedral Rock. The cemetery is a veritable who's who of original Sedona settlers: the Schuermans, the Thompsons; the Purtymans, a Baldwin and Owenby; you'll find these iconic Sedona names on homesteads, crossings, trails, residential streets, buttes, and irrigation ditches throughout the town.
Sedona's second oldest graveyard, the Cook Cedar Glade Cemetery, which is the final resting place of Sedona Schnebly and many other original founding families. This pioneer cemetery was established in 1918 with the death from the Spanish Flu. Henry Cook homesteaded 160 acres that included this site.
The last Cemetery was the Sedona Community Cemetery. This is the newest cemetery, dedicated in 2019 providing the same stunning views after death that they enjoyed living here. These are definitely graves with a view!
Of course we did our requisite shopping at Tlaquepaque and eating at our favorite spot (Thanksgiving at The Hudson) along with some new ones (a great lunch at the Hideaway House) and even enjoyed listening to an evening of jazz while we had dinner at Sound Bites Grill on our first night, which was new for us! All this just goes to shows that one can go to the same place again and again, and still find new adventures to discover!
As we ended our delightful week's stay, we topped it off with a wonderful visit with a dear friend we hadn't seen in many years! I had posted a quick snap about enjoying the jazz player in Sedona, and she caught it and shared that she was not far away, in Prescott! It is so delightful to be able to catch up with lovely people, to reconnect and share again, it's what makes life so special.
This will be a trip long remembered as we hunker down to our "winter routine" here at the resort. Christmas is just around the corner, and the annual Theater Production's rehearsals take up all of January and February, along with my Board of Director's duties...so this little respite needs to last me awhile!
Until the next one...Marie
If you would like to see all the photos from this trip, just go to my flickr account at: https://flickr.com/photos/74905158@N04/
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