Located in Arizona's high desert under the towering southwestern rim of the vast Colorado Plateau, the city of Sedona is blessed with four mild seasons marked by abundant sunshine and clean air. Ideally, the annual average high and low temperatures are 74.7 and 45.7 degrees, respectively.
Almost the entire world knows that Sedona, strategically situated at the mouth of spectacular Oak Creek Canyon, is a unique place. Characterized by massive red-rock formations, as well as the contrasting riparian areas of Oak Creek Canyon, the area surrounding this beloved community is considered at least as beautiful as many national parks.
The story about how Sedona was named is well known; nonetheless, a brief telling is appropriate. As the story goes, after Theodore Carl Schnebly and his wife, Sedona, moved to Sedona from Gorin, Missouri, the few families living here convinced T.C. to establish a post office in his large home, which already had become the community's hotel. Various interpretations of this story suggest that he asked the government to name the post office Schnebly Station or Red Rock Crossing. Subsequently, he was told the names were too long, and following a suggestion by his brother, Dorsey Ellsworth Schnebly, he submitted his wife's name, Sedona. And so it was.
The city of Sedona, one of Arizona's premier tourism, recreation, resort, retirement and art centers, was incorporated in 1988. Historically, it was a rural ranching community located far off the beaten path, but its unsurpassed natural beauty became nationally known through the motion picture industry. Today, commercials and television shows still are filmed in the unsettled areas surrounding this city, which annually attracts more than 4 million tourists from around the world.
Sedona voted the #1 most beautiful place in America…
USA Today
Red Rock Country (Sedona, Ariz.)
Ever since the early days of movies, when Hollywood has wanted to show the unique beauty of the West, it has gone to Sedona, a place that looks like nowhere else. Beginning with The Call of the Canyon in 1923, some hundred movies and TV shows have been filmed in and around town. We fell under Sedona's spell, too, and while debating our No. 1 spot kept returning to it for the same reasons Hollywood does:
The area's telegenic canyons, wind-shaped buttes and dramatic sandstone towers embody the rugged character of the West -- and the central place that character holds in our national identity. There's a timelessness about these ancient rocks that fires the imagination of all who encounter them. Some 11,000 years before film cameras discovered Sedona, American Indians settled the area. Homesteaders, artists and, most recently, New Age spiritualists have followed.
Many cultures and agendas abound, but there's really only one attraction: the sheer, exuberant beauty of the place. People come for inspiration and renewal, tawny cliffs rising from the buff desert floor, wind singing through box canyons, and sunsets that seem to cause the ancient buttes and spires to glow from within. We hear the canyon's call and cannot resist.
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