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Sedona, Arizona, Is At The Crossroads Of Its History And Future

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John Mariani

Wordsworth wrote of London, “earth hath not anything to show more fair.” But then, he’d never been to Sedona, Arizona.

Arizona has been blessed with extraordinary natural wonders—the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Havasu Falls, the Petrified Forest, Sagauro National Park—along with unique man-made marvels like Hoover Dam and the Native Anerican cliff dwellings of Canyon de Chelly. Sedona’s Red Rock country flanking the town, with its magnificent Castle Rock, Bell Rock and Courthouse Rock, ranks among the finest, most iconic destinations in America, making it a top tourist and hiking site, with 300 miles of trails. For some it is considered a spiritual place full of energy vortexes; others arrive hoping to witness a UFO sighting.

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Though small in size—only about 19 square miles—Sedona’s natural beauty and accessibility, as well as a Native American history that dates back 11,500 years B.C., has brought not just a barrage of tourist but also an influx of seniors and second-home buyers who have put the town’s traditional character in considerable flux. With a year-round population of only 11,000 people whose median family income is only $56,000, Sedona has been swollen by tourism and development, with the median cost of a house now $562,000.

In January, City Manager Justin Clifton told The Arizona Republic

there were more than 1,000 vacation rentals in the city, counting for 20% of Sedona's total housing inventory. Sedona’s Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jennifer Wesselhoff, told Wrangler News that she is “receiving complaints from business owners fearing that the lack of availability of affordable housing is driving away workers.”

Indeed, while I was in Sedona I heard nothing by high praise for the Mexican workers who make the town’s hospitality business possible. “They are the hardest working, finest people you’ll ever meet,” a local restaurateur told me. “Without them, we’d have to close all the resorts and restaurants.”

Rampant tourism and development is a double-edged sword everywhere in the world, whereby cities and regions grow rich while their essential character may be forever changed. It is always a battle over displacement, and long-time Sedonans have been fighting to keep their beloved town a place of unique enchantment.

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While I did not indulge in the hunt for vortexes or UFOs, I certainly found the kind of wonder every visitor seeks in Sedona, which you begin to encounter in the mesas and red rocks about an hour’s drive out of the smoggy air of Phoenix, and they loom larger and larger as you approach Sedona, whose pretty but prosaic name derives from Sedona Arabella Miller Schnebly, wife of the city’s first postmaster. That name may lack the tough western twang of other Arizona towns like Rough Rock, Tombstone, Wolf Hole, Bitter Springs and Skull Valley, but Sedona is as yet a quiet, well maintained oasis of gentility in the state. The town itself lies along Route 89A, lined with antique stores, restaurants like Silver Saddle and Cowboy Club, and resort spas named Poco Diablo and Enchantment.  (I’ll be writing about where to stay and to eat in an upcoming article.)

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The town’s tourist map ads list numerous jeep tours, galleries, a Center for the New Age offering aura photos, UFO sighting tours, Creekside Healing and Past Life Regression. Twice a year The Sedona Solstice brings in musicians, astrologers and healers.

Jordan House Museum

Sedona has an out-sized commitment to the arts: There’s the highly regarded annual Sedona International Film Festival and Blue Grass festival; an extensive chamber music season; and the year-round Sedona Arts Center. One of the more appealing sites for me was the Sedona Heritage Museum in uptown, on the National Register of Historic Places.

This is not a modern museum with a famous architect’s name on it—no Frank Gehry warped titanium, no Renzo Piano walls of glass. Indeed, the intent has been to preserve the Walter and Ruth Jordan family’s 1931 farmstead, which Ruth sold to the city in 1998 in order to save it from becoming a housing development.

It is quaintly delightful: The old rooms, kitchen, appliances and rock-faced attached garage cover 3,000 square feet, and inside it is packed with original artifacts that exhibit the hard work and simple pleasures of an Arizona farm family during and after the Depression. There is also a

40’ x 80’ fruit packing shed, built in 1946, that still houses the Jordans’ tractors and an apple grading machine. A tenthouse was added in 2007 as a replica of early pioneer housing whose ease of dismantling made it kind of mobile home.

Original in its own way on the property is a telegraph office, relocated to the Museum grounds in 2014, that was built for the John Wayne 1947 movie “The Angel and the Badman,” and the inside is festooned with western movie memorabilia.

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The old romantic road Route 66 never ran through Sedona, and Jack Kerouac seems not to have visited the town, but when twilight ends, standing under the endless umbrella of stars, I thought of what that restless traveler wrote about the vastness of the West in his book On the Road:

“The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.”