Five Things You Must Do While You Are in Flagstaff

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Flagstaff (population 54,000) is the best base for traveling in northern Arizona. Sometimes called “The City of Seven Wonders,” it is surrounded by natural attractions and the ruins of prehistoric villages. At 7,000 feet in the Kaibab National Forest, Flagstaff is a forested, high-desert oasis in an arid region.

1.  Tour the Museum of Northern Arizona. This should be your first stop for an introduction to the archaeology, ethnology, geology, biology, and fine arts of the entire Colorado Plateau and the Four Corners Region, where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico converge. The stone-and-timber building houses one of the region’s best collections of Southwest Indian pottery and weaving. 

2.  Discover another planet. The Lowell Observatory, atop Mars Hill west of Flagstaff, is where the planet Pluto was discovered in 1930. You can take a peek through the original 1894 telescope in a wooden observatory tower, then take a guided tour of the facility.

3.  Ski in the desert. Fairfield Snowbowl, a few miles north of Flagstaff, provides superb Alpine and cross-country skiing and snowboarding throughout the winter. Three lodges, three triple chairlifts, and 33 snow trails cater to all levels of skiers. Chairlift sightseeing rides up to 11,500-foot Mount Humphries and hiking trailheads are available in summer.

4. Anasazi Ruin, Walnut Canyon and Wupatki National Monuments.   See an Anasazi ruin. Walnut Canyon and Wupatki national monuments are a short drive from Flagstaff. A one-hour walk on a paved trail above Walnut Canyon accesses about 100, small, 800-year-old cliff dwellings of the Sinagua band of the Anasazi Indians. Wupatki was a community of Kayenta, Sinagua, Hohokam, and Cohonina farmers living in pueblo pit houses. A ¼-mile trail takes you to an 800-year-old ruin called “Lomaki,” or “Beautiful House”; an amphitheater; and the farthest north ball court in pre-Columbian America.

5. Sunset Crater . See a “new” volcanic cinder cone. One-thousand-foot-tall Sunset Crater (northeast of town on the way to Wupatki) began erupting in 1064-65 A.D. – unusually recent in geological time – and spewed cinders for almost 200 years. A 1-mile nature trail loop starting at the visitors center leads you to the crater’s edge. The path also gives you a look at the entrance to a collapsed ice cave.