From Sinagua cliff houses to a post office named Sedona
People have lived under these rocks for a very long time. The Sinagua built cliff dwellings at Palatki and Honanki around 1150–1300 CE, and left rock art that is thousands of years older still. The Yavapai and Apache lived here after them — until 1875, when the U.S. Army force-marched about 1,400 people out of the Verde Valley to the San Carlos reservation, a removal their descendants still mark every year.
The first Anglo homesteader, J.J. Thompson, settled at Indian Gardens in Oak Creek Canyon in 1876. In 1902, when settler T.C. Schnebly applied for a post office, Washington rejected his first two name ideas — Oak Creek Crossing and Schnebly Station — as too long. His brother suggested the name of T.C.'s wife instead. The post office opened as Sedona on June 26, 1902, and the town has carried Sedona Schnebly's invented first name ever since. It didn't incorporate as a city until 1988.
