Qualla: Sedona, Arizona

Sedona, Arizona: Introduction

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kathymac007007, CC BY-SA 4.0. Her mother made the name up because it sounded pretty. That is the entire origin story of Sedona, Arizona, one of the most photographed landscapes in the American West. When Theodore Carlton Schnebly needed a name for the new post office he was establishing in 1902, he submitted his wife's name, Sedona, a word her mother Amanda Miller had simply invented. There were 55 residents at the time. Today over 10,000 people live among the pink sandstone towers and mesas of the northern Verde Valley, and roughly three million visitors arrive each year to see the formations that glow amber and rose when the desert sun hits them at the right angle. The geology is 270 million years old. The town is barely older than a century. The tension between ancient landscape and recent human presence is the thing that makes Sedona endlessly interesting.

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Image: Kathymac007007 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sedona, Arizona: Stone Written in Deep Time

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Terrydarc, CC BY-SA 3.0. The pink and red rock that defines Sedona is a single geological unit: the Schnebly Hill Formation, a thick layer of sandstone deposited during the Permian Period, roughly 270 million years ago. It belongs to the Supai Group and is found only in the Sedona vicinity. Over millions...

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Image: Terrydarc | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sedona, Arizona: Arizona's Little Hollywood

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scotwriter21, CC BY-SA 4.0. From 1923 into the 1970s, Sedona hosted more than sixty Hollywood productions. Major westerns including Angel and the Badman, Johnny Guitar, 3:10 to Yuma, and Broken Arrow were filmed against the pink rocks, though audiences were told they were seeing Texas, California, Nevada, o...

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Image: Scotwriter21 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sedona, Arizona: Vortices and Convergences

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthew P. Del Buono, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1987, Jose Arguelles organized the Harmonic Convergence in Sedona, and the New Age tourism industry that followed has never left. Believers identify four primary energy vortices in the area: Bell Rock, Airport Mesa, Cathedral Rock, and Boynton Canyon. Whether or not one subscr...

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Image: Matthew P. Del Buono | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sedona, Arizona: From Orchards to Overtourism

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lankyrider, CC BY-SA 4.0. The first European-American settler, John J. Thompson, arrived in Oak Creek Canyon in 1876 to farm peach and apple orchards. For decades, Sedona was a ranching and farming community so remote that parts of it lacked electricity until the 1960s. Tourism development began in the 19...

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Image: Lankyrider | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sedona, Arizona: Red Rock Country From Above

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nikolai Gates Vetr, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the air, Sedona's red rock formations are unmistakable against the green of the surrounding national forest. Cathedral Rock and Bell Rock stand like sentinels south of town, while the flat mesa of Airport Mesa, topped by Sedona Airport, is visible as a plateau jutting out fr...

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Image: Nikolai Gates Vetr | CC BY-SA 4.0