They call it Red Rock Country. It`s a small, out-of-the-way, special spot in Arizona that`s big on scenery. Yes, there are redstone buttes throughout Arizona and the Southwest. But in Sedona, it`s different.
Approaching from the south, you leave the Phoenix-Flagstaff freeway at Rimrock and turn onto Arizona Highway 179. Drive a few miles, round a corner and there they are: towering sandstone spires that shoot straight up from green hillsides. Everywhere you look there are forests of vibrant fire-red stone.
The names suggest the distinctive shapes: Cathedral Rock, Courthouse Rock, Bell Rock, Snoopy Rock, Steamboat Rock, Coffee Pot Rock, Capitol Butte.
It`s the kind of picture-postcard landscape that often ends up on the cover of Arizona Highways magazine. It`s what causes more than three million tourists to pass through every year. It`s why hundreds return to stay. It`s what compels artists by the dozens to set up shop and create.
Sedona is Arizona`s hot spot. And we`re not talking about the weather. In fact, the climate here is more temperate than most of Arizona-the town sits above the desert and below the rim country area of Flagstaff. In summer, nights are cool. In winter, a dusting of snow adds a magical frosting to the red mountains.
And make no mistake. It`s those red mesas and buttes that make Sedona magnetic.
Some say the rocks hold special powers. According to Native American legend, the Grandmother Spirit of the world still lives in Sedona, welcoming her family home.
Favorite with New Agers
Others consider Sedona the spot for spiritual advancement and enlightenment. New Agers have picked it as the place to be. It has something to do with the rocks and ”vortexes” and strong energy that combine to create a ”spiritual turbo boost,” in the words of Pete A. Sanders Jr., president and founder of the Free Soul Psychic Education Program, based in Sedona.
Sanders says the energy pattern makes it possible ”to be mentally uplifted to higher levels of soul consciousness but still be able to look inward and sense remnants of past-life karma or communicate internally with the deepest levels of your Guides.”
Claudia Zwick of suburban Denver also calls the place special. She and her husband got ”red rock fever” and had to have a piece of the rock. They bought a house here two years ago.
They had been to Sedona on vacation three times before.
”On the fourth time, we weren`t planning to buy anything, but we walked into a real estate office and asked for something specific,” says Zwick, an artist. ”She had something. We looked at it and put in a contract. We never even looked at anything else. It was meant to be. That`s what happens in Sedona.”
Zwick doesn`t know a lot about ”the New Age stuff,” but living here part-time makes it impossible not to know about some of it.
”The stories are intertwined with Native American legend as well,”
Zwick says. ”It`s not something that`s very new. It`s something the New Age community has kind of latched onto. There`s definitely some things that you feel. It`s a pretty powerful place. There are a lot of people who just say it`s ridiculous but . . .
”We go there as often as we can. It`s still not often enough.”
Off the beaten path
Sedona is off the beaten path-it`s not on an interstate highway-yet travelers beat a path to its door.
Various native cultures have lived in the area since 2000 B.C. Spanish explorers found the valley in the 1700s, and the first Western settler arrived in 1876. In 1902 there were about 20 families in what then was called Camp Garden, among them Carl and Sedona Schnebly. When Carl petitioned for a post office, his brother suggested using his wife`s name, and that`s how the town became Sedona.
Hollywood discovered Sedona in the 1920s and used it as the setting for Zane Grey`s ”Call of the Canyon.” Dozens of movies have been filmed here since.
After World War II, veterans and retirees, many of them artists, found their way to Sedona. More than 100 artists now live here, and two dozen or so art galleries are tucked into hillsides and along storefronts. It`s also where the Cowboy Artists of America was founded in 1965.
In 1950, 400 families lived in the greater Sedona area. By 1976, the population was up to 4,000; now it`s pegged at 8,500. In 1989, Coldwell Banker listed Sedona among the nation`s real estate hot spots.
Frank Miller moved to Sedona nine months ago from Los Angeles and became executive director of the Sedona Chamber of Commerce about a month ago.
”I love the mixture of it being a small town yet having input of the visitors,” he says. ”It adds a little more of a cosmopolitan flavor and, because of the visitors and tourists who come through here, we have a far higher degree of nice resorts and restaurants than you normally would find in a community of 8,500 people.”
One-traffic-light town
There`s no night life in Sedona, a one-traffic-light town. Even restaurants close earlier than they might in a city. The big show takes place during daylight. That`s the best time to absorb the star attraction-the environment. And it`s all around you, for hiking, horseback riding, ballooning, bicycling, camping, fishing, picnicking, touring, golfing and gawking.
You can lose yourself in Oak Creek Canyon, which runs north out of Sedona for 16 miles through spectacular rock country and Coconino National Forest. Sunlight bounces off huge monoliths and dapples through dazzling trees.
Scenery changes with the seasons. In fall, turning leaves splash their colors along the groves that flank the spring-fed, gurgling creek. In summer, Slide Rock State Park becomes a swimming hole, complete with a waterslide of rocks deposited by Mother Nature along a channel in the creek. The creek is stocked with rainbow and German trout May through September.
For meditation of another sort, visit Chapel of the Holy Cross three miles south of town. This modern cruciform chapel looks as if it`s growing right out of the cliffs, and it is.
Artist Marguerite Brunswig Staude conceived of the design when she was in New York in 1932 watching the completion of the Empire State Building. From a certain angle, she could see a cross through the core of the building. The same idea for a church haunted her, and she drew a sketch.
Frank Lloyd Wright saw the sketch and was struck by the idea. He built an architectural model that showed a modern skyscraper cathedral encircling a square city block. It was to be built in Budapest on a hill overlooking the Danube. War in Europe put an end to the plan.
Staude, who owned a ranch in Oak Creek Canyon, resurrected her idea years later and, after a great search, decided to plant the cross on a twin-pinnacled ridge about 250 feet high. A 1,000-foot rock wall behind it stretches to the heavens. Completed in 1956, the chapel features a glass wall behind the altar so the vistas can be cherished from inside.
If all this scenery gets too heady, head for Tlaquepaque Arts and Crafts Village (pronounced T-Lockey-Pockey, Spanish for ”the best of everything”). The cluster of shops built in elegant Spanish Colonial style contains more than 30 stores that sell jewelry, clothing and art, as well as three restaurants. The quaint shopping center is designed after the artists` colony by the same name outside Guadalajara, Mexico.
Limits to growth
A brouhaha has erupted recently over whether Sedona should be designated a National Scenic Area, which some see as a way to stem growth and
development. It would limit how much Forest Service land would be relinquished for private sale.
”It just makes us sick,” Zwick says about proposals for more development. ”We want to see Sedona preserved.”
Zwick and her husband hope to move to Sedona permanently.
”You find such fascinating stories of how people found this place,” she says. ”You hear about people who were going through town on their way somewhere else and never leave. It`s really kind of strange. But everyone who lives in Sedona is there for a reason. They had to create a space for themselves because it is not an easy place to find work.
”It`s almost like the movie `Close Encounters (of the Third Kind),` how these people were all kind of brought together for a reason. There are a lot of people who would laugh at that. But it`s true.”
GETTING TO, STAYING IN SEDONA
Sedona is 27 miles south of Flagstaff, Ariz., 125 miles south of the Grand Canyon and 116 miles north of Phoenix.
Getting there: From Phoenix, take Interstate Highway 17 north to Rimrock, then Arizona Highway 179 into Sedona. From Flagstaff, take the scenic route
(Arizona Highway 89A) south through Oak Creek Canyon.
Sedona Transportation Co. (602-282-2066) offers shuttle service three times a day between the Phoenix airport and Sedona. Fare: $30 one-way, $50 round trip.
Tours: Several companies offer Jeep tours through Red Rock Country. Rates for Pink Jeep Tours range from $15 for a one-hour introductory tour to $38 for a 2 1/2-hour archeological tour to $47 for a 2 1/2-hour premier tour. Time Expeditions offers Sedona`s ”only” ancient ruin expedition, among other Jeep treks. The 2 1/2-hour, 30-mile trip takes travelers to a 12th Century Indian cliff dwelling in the back country. Cost: $45 a person.
Other ways to see the spectacular red-rock country include balloon rides, horseback trail rides, llama treks and helicopter rides.
Where to stay: Accommodations range from inexpensive motels ($25 to $30 a night) to expensive golf and tennis resorts such as Enchantment Tennis Ranch
(800-826-4180), where a one-night stay will cost $180 for a unit (buffet breakfast included), to $450 a night for a casita that sleeps up to four people.
In town, overlooking spectacular red rocks, the Best Western Arroyo Roble Hotel (602-282-4001) starts at $90 a night and goes to $225, while the L`Auberge de Sedona (800-272-6777) has quarters in charming cottages (no phones or TVs, $225 to $400 low season and $250 to $425 high season, dinner and breakfast included) or in the lodge ($115 to $135 low season, $125 to $145 high season) or its better-than-average motel units ($85 to $130 low season, $95 to $140 high season). (Low season is Dec. 1 through the end of February;
high season is the rest of the year.)
Events: Yearly events include St. Patrick`s Day parade, Easter Sunrise service, Sedona Hopi Show in May, Autumn Arts Festival and Jazz on the Rocks festival in September, Fiesta del Tlaquepaque in October and Festival of Lights in December.
When to go: Temperatures average 85 degrees in summer and 65 degrees in winter.
More information: Sedona/Oak Creek Canyon Chamber of Commerce, 602-282-7722.
