What’s in a Name? The Town of Sedona Knows

In 1902, the U.S. Postmaster General made what to me seems a landmark decision: He rejected the name that was proposed for a new post office in Arizona Territory near the entrance to Oak Creek Canyon.

Had he been less bold I might be writing today about an awesome place of mammoth red rocks and sun-bleached pinnacles--a place called Schnebly Station.

You can’t blame T. Carl Schnebly. He and his bride had come west from Missouri, where he was a hardware dealer. He wanted to start a new life in north-central Arizona and be near his brother, Ellsworth. Many pioneers gave their names to towns, rivers and bluffs. Carl tried to do the same.

But Schnebly Station was deemed too long for a postmark, and so was Oak Creek Crossing. It was Ellsworth, history says, who finally suggested submitting the name of Carl’s wife, Sedona.

Sedona, about 45 miles south of Flagstaff, is neither an Indian nor a Spanish name, as visitors tend to assume. It was made up by the Pennsylvania Dutch parents of Sedona Miller, back in Godin, Mo., in 1877.

Yet Sedona does sound like a cry on the Arizona wind, a whisper from a mountain ballad. It rises to the challenge of the wild Western setting that has attracted movie makers since Zane Grey’s “Call of the Canyon” was filmed on location here in 1923.

The mesas and monoliths of this vast sculpture garden are mostly sandstone. Erosion has shaped them into bells and cathedrals, teapots and layer cakes. Some are a thousand feet tall. At sunset they blaze like a hungry hearth; at dawn they glow like coals.

Burnt red, cool pine green and skies of Navajo turquoise . . . that’s the palette of Sedona. No wonder hundreds of artists have gathered here in the spirit of a young Santa Fe.

The mime Robert Shields has opened a gallery along U.S. 89-A, one of about 25 showrooms to crop up in recent years. Southwest art and crafts prevail. Indian rugs and jewelry are exquisite.

Essential stops for the cognoscenti and the curious include Garland’s Navajo Rugs on Arizona 179 near the cluster of shops called Tlaquepaque; Garland’s Indian Jewelry at Indian Gardens three miles from Sedona, and Don Hoel’s Indian Jewelry about five miles farther north up the canyon toward Flagstaff.

On Friday and Saturday mornings--or any time that a rug is ready and a ride to town is available--Navajo weavers take their work to Garland’s trading post. Dan Garland speaks Navajo and is patient. I have watched him talk to weavers who have not sold before about the value of their time and efforts, from the cost of raising the sheep to the hours spent at the loom.

Don Hoel’s shop, operated by Hoel’s widow and grandson, is usually open, but appointments are encouraged. A remarkable Kachina collection lines one wall of the vault-like room that is part of a forest canyon home. The collection of turquoise and silver jewelry is rare.

The Native American presence adds dignity and surprise to life in Sedona. At Tlaquepaque I paused to listen as a gray-haired Navajo played a handmade flute near a Christmas shop called Feliz Navidad. Three other wooden flutes rested in a basket near his moccasins, but he would not sell them.

“They are not finished,” he told an insistent young man. “Try if you want. The low notes are not ready.”

Contemporary artisans turn out rosewood chopsticks, pottery bowls marked Salsa and masks of beads and leather. Crystals of all sizes are sold in line with the get-in-touch-with-the-Earth movement of New Age devotees. They claim that the Sedona region is a source of potent psychic energy. They compare its power to the Pyramids of Egypt.

Crystals are their link. I saw simple chunks of crystal priced at $55. A large crystal, wired as a pink-glow lamp, was marked $700. There are New Age bookstores, and Jeep tours that take groups for meditation among the rocks on full-moon nights.

“Sedona is, you know, mystical,” I heard a voice say, as music that sounded like a waterfall spilled from an open door.

I wonder if she’d feel the same about Schnebly Station?