Sedona History Facts and Timeline

(Sedona, Arizona - AZ, USA)

Southwestern America's stunning desert country, with its soaring red sandstone outcrops and formations, is a major attraction for visitors to the Arizona city of Sedona.

Set in the Verde Valley, on the boundary between the Yavapai and the Coconino counties, this area is often referred to as the 'Red Rocks of Sedona', after the rugged pinnacles which glow orange and red in the rising and setting sun. The city itself is the perfect setting for everything from hiking and biking to New Age spiritual pursuits.

Early Settlers

The first white farmers and ranchers moved into the area in the middle of the 1870s, just after the eviction of the Apache and the Yavapai peoples from their ancient Verde Valley settlements. This marked a sad note in history, since in mid-winter they were forced to march close to 200 miles / 322 km southeast to the San Carlos Indian Reservation, during which a high percentage died.


The earliest settlement, at Oak Creek Canyon, soon became well-known for its successful orchards. Over the subsequent decades, the city grew at a fairly gradual pace, seeing the arrival of amenities and local businesses such as blacksmiths, grocery stores and postal services. By the 1960s, all of the districts in this city were fully connected to the National Grid.

A Change of Focus

At around this time, Sedona began to market itself as a retirement and holiday home destination, spurring extensive modern development during the 1980s and '90s. Nowadays, no sizeable areas of land in or near the city remain unsold.

Sedona in the Movies

Interestingly, the city's legacy from the early years of Hollywood until the 1970s reads like a timeline history for the movie industry's development, along with that of popular culture. A favorite shooting location for Westerns, Sedona sits in lush forests, 116 miles / 187 km to the north of Phoenix, being surrounded by 1,000-foot / 300-meter high red sandstone walls and the wide open spaces of the valley itself.

This picturesque desert oasis and outpost, with its signature rocks, played host to a plethora of Hollywood legends, such as John Ford, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Joan Crawford and Robert Mitchum, as well as the stars of the silent screen and even Elvis, but it is rarely mentioned in movie histories.

Oddly, Sedona was also a hub for the 'Hollywood Ten' (Hollywood Blacklist), including renowned American screenwriter and author Albert Matz, who was widely persecuted and blacklisted for supposed anti-American sentiment. Title credits were often removed for these movie outcasts and were not actually restored until 1997, after a meeting of the Writers Guild of America.

History of New Age Sedona

Following the ancient traditions of the Native American Apaches and Yavapais, who returned from reservation exile in 1900, New Age tourism is enjoying a strong revival. Established in the late 1980s by one Jose Arguelles, it includes a variety of ancient spiritual disciplines from across the planet.

Based on the belief that spiritual fields are concentrated around local attractions such as the Cathedral Rock, the Bell Rock and also the Boynton Canyon, the first globally synchronised meditation, the Harmonic Convergence, took place here in 1987, at a time of perfect alignment of the earth's planetary solar system.

Today, tourists come to Sedona to explore and admire the sandstone formations around the Oak Creek Canyon, and to take a ride along the extremely scenic Verde Canyon Railroad. History buffs are advised to check out the Sedona Heritage Museum on Jordan Road, while roughly 45 minutes to the south, the cliff dwellings of the Montezuma Castle National Monument may also be of interest.