I first discovered Walnut Canyon, near Flagstaff, Arizona, in the late 1990’s when my college geology class went there on a field trip. Although I had lived in Flagstaff for four years, I had never managed to see the local national monument.

Experiencing the Park

When we drove into the park, the landscape looked like the northern Arizona terrain I was used to: lots of red dirt, Ponderosa pines and short juniper trees. We made our way into the visitor’s center and were immediately struck with the center’s panoramic view of the canyon and Anderson Mesa in the distance. From the parking lot, you don’t even realize you are within a few hundred feet of a canyon rim, so the wow factor of the view inside the center is enormous.

From just outside the visitor center we could see down into the canyon, which was formed by the meandering waters of Walnut Creek. The trail that leads down into the canyon is called the Island Trail because it circles a lower rim of a huge rock formation that juts out into the canyon like an island. The trail is only .9 miles total, but it plunges 185 feet downward via 240 manmade stairs. But, my geology class, full of healthy college kids, hopped down the stairs easily. At the bottom of the stairs, the trail leads to the left, or west, around the first part of the island.

Here, the vegetation changes a bit, as we are descending from an Upper Sonoran desert landscape, complete with yucca plants and prickly pear cactus. As we descend, we move into the Pacific Northwestern forest zone, and begin seeing more conifers and shade loving vegetation. As we round the bend to the south, we find our path is taking us right into cliff dwellings, built over 900 years ago by the Native American Sinagua people. Sinagua is the Spanish word for “without water.” Archaeologists named the ancient canyon dwellers this because of their resourcefulness in living in a relatively dry area.