good-times-rollin: history plants and trees at Walnut Canyon

Flagstaff KOA

Flagstaff, AZ

August 12, 2025

Gamble Oak

In a pine forest near Flagstaff, a steep canyon divides a rolling plateau. The canyon is 20 miles long, 400 feet deep, and 1/4 mile wide. It was carved by Walnut Creek over a period of 60 million years.

Walnut Canyon has a long history of human inhabitants. Artifacts have been discovered that show Archaic peoples, who traveled throughout the Southwest thousands of years ago, occupied the canyon. The first permanent inhabitants flourished here from about 600 until 1400.

In the 1800s Walnut Canyon became a popular destination for "pot-seekers who upturned ancient floors, toppled enduring walls and desecrated graves. Local citizens led the effort to establishment of Walnut Canyon National Monument in 1915. The CCC played a major role in the late 1930s...stabilizing walls, conducting guided tours to protect the dwellings, and constructing buildings that are still used today.

It's hard to imagine that these rocky slopes echoed with children laughing, tools clanging, and the voices of aged storytellers. Between 1125 and 1250 a farming community flourished in the canyon. Men in the community were busy hunting (deer, bighorn sheep and other wild game) and farming (corn, beans, and squash to supplement wild plants) on the canyon rim. Women were busy replastering walls, making pottery, and hauling water from the creek below. Enough water had to be hauled during the wet season and stored for the dry season. More than 300 cliff dwellings have been found on both sides of the canyon walls.

The Island Trail is a hike 185 feet down into the canyon. It is a short, 1 mile round trip, but rated strenuous with 736 steps (according to the NPS) on a paved walk with switchbacks. We were advised not to stop and read the kiosks along the way down, but save those for a stop to "catch your breath" on the way back up.

Starting from the Visitor Center

Once on the flat path that meanders under the alcove, there are 25 dwellings to see up close. It was a community of relatives and neighbors who worked together to hunt, farm and share resources, during fun times, hard times, and successes and failures. Paths on the canyon floor closed the gaps to homes on the other side of the canyon and communication between households would have been common and necessary.

Larger rooms were used for storage...tools, food, and water.

The women who lived in these rooms regularly replastered the outside walls to keep moisture out and the walls sound. Inside walls were plastered too which made them a bit brighter.

Small doors were covered with animal skins or sticks woven together. Air entered at the bottom, circled past a small fire and carried most of the smoke out a hole above the door.

The canyon has a nice variety of trees including oaks, ponderosa pines, pinion pines, junipers, and Douglas firs. The canyon is named for the Arizona black walnut trees which grow along the creek at the bottom of the canyon.

Trees and other plants were a source of food and wood.

Sweet acorns from the Gamble Oak provided protein and the tough pliable wood was used for bows, arrowheads, digging sticks, throwing sticks, and weaving tools.

Gamble Oak

Douglas Fir

Wax Currant

Mat Rock Spiraea

A tree and a cliff wall...

After the Island Trail, the Rim Trail is a good cool down walk. It's a short, easy walk on the canyon edge through a pinyon-juniper woodland just outside the VC. This is the mesa used for farming corn, beans and squash and for hunting deer, rabbits, and wild game for meat, bone, fur and feathers.

The remains of a in-ground pit house can be viewed (probably used for storage) and the remains of a stone masonry pueblo.

Pit house

Two room pueblo

It was an awesome morning. And it was a solemn morning. The beauty, the history, the responsibilities and hardships, the children born there who grew up and raised children of their own children there, and their descendants who still visit and care for the this ancestral village triggers a sense of awe. The Zuni tribal members believe the spirits of those who could not travel on with the clan were left behind and their spirits fill these homes today. These sites are revisited, prayers are still offered, and plants are still ritually gathered here. Walnut Canyon was - and is - a place that resonates with life.

It was lunch time when we left the canyon. A quick search took us to the last standing building in the Arizona Lumberyard. The historical Halstead Lumberyard Building, built in the early 1900s was refurbished and today is the home of Lumberyard Brewery. It is located just south of the railroad track on San Francisco Street.

Lunch, one of Brewery's specialties, was yummy! We both had the Buffalo Chicken Salad...mixed greens topped with tomato, onion, carrot, celery, blue cheese crumbles, and boneless wings tossed with buffalo sauce served with ranch dressing on their side.

And the Hazy Angel IPA hit the spot!

The Desert Jar, another Brewery speciality was also scrumptious! It's a lemon cheesecake pudding layered with pound cake and fresh raspberries.

Yep, we ate every bite!

There is the most awesome mural on the side of the brewery. It stretches from one end to the other on the side of the old lumberyard building. Different eras of history in Flagstaff are depicted. The attention to detail in this huge mural was captivating. Looking at the mural from the front of the building to the back...right to left.