Red Rock Country's Scenic Shortcut

Red Rock Country's $1800 Scenic Shortcut... Schnebly Hill Road

It was our Midwestern friends' first visit to Sedona, and we had decided to treat them to our "four-hour special." We would tell them no more. They were intrigued and trusting.

Packing the car with a picnic basket and cameras, we meandered up U.S. Route 89A through Oak Creek Canyon, snaked up the switchbacks, and stopped on top at the overlook to view the chasm now 2000 feet below us. We continued on, climbing slowly toward Flagstaff through the pungent pine forest, and our friends thought the best was over when we turned onto Interstate Route 17 and headed back southward.

We kept smugly quiet. Twenty-one miles south of Flagstaff, a highway sign announced "Schnebly Hill Road." We heard an "oh" or two when the off-ramp dumped us onto a narrow, pockmarked dirt road; so we assured our passengers it would only last for a dozen miles. Five miles later, we emerged from the ponderosa pines, and the narrow road suddenly disappeared right down the rocky face of the Mogollon Rim. They deny it, but I saw our friends edge left in their seats, away from the unfenced, shoulderless, unbroken slope dropping away from us on the right.

Then they caught sight of the view. We were, after all, on the eastern wall of Oak Creek Canyon's dramatic, colorful gorge.

By the time we had stopped at various vista points, eaten our tailgate picnic, and been serenaded by the incomparably sweet song of two canyon wrens, our guests were totally enthralled.

"But why," they asked, "did anyone build a road up here in the first place?"

The answer goes back almost a hundred years, and it's as easy as this: the Flagstaff level, at about 7000 feet elevation, is a wonderful place for cattle to range in the summer, and the Verde Valley, 3000 to nearly 4000 feet lower, is equally fine in the winter. True then, true now.

This wisdom wasn't lost on the William Munds family, who homesteaded land both in the Verde Valley and above the Rim. From local history, one can piece together a fascinating tale about Schnebly Hill Road's birth-and near death.

At the time the Munds arrived, travel to Flagstaff meant taking a wagon road southeasterly from Sedona some twenty miles until you hit the Old Flagstaff-Verde Valley Wagon Road. From that point, it was still another thirty tough uphill miles to Flagstaff.

Fortunately, cattle have narrower axles than wagons. William Munds' son Jim wasn't about to drive his cattle the long way around when his pasture on the Rim was only half a mile away from Oak Creek. Half a mile up, that is. Jim, with help, no doubt, set to work hacking a livestock trail up the east wall of Oak Creek Canyon. When completed, the new Munds Trail was thirty-five miles (two days) shorter than the older route.

By 1892, when Jim Munds was killed in a shooting accident, many local and Verde Valley residents were wishing their favorite cattle trail were a wagon road. Jim's brother-in-law, John Loy, then picked up the torch, raised some money, and started digging a wagon-wheel trench on the inside of the trail. The rocky terrain did not yield easily to hand tools, but in six months a couple of miles had been dug. Then money and energy ran out.

Other efforts at financing the shortcut failed, and it was not until February, 1902, when residents successfully petitioned for the establishment of a public road, that Coconino County at long last became involved.

Later that year, Oak Creek Canyon pioneer J. J. Thompson was awarded a 600dollar contract to oversee the completion of the road Loy had started. By 1904 work was finished. The shortcut was a fact. At the southernmost end of the new county road was the T. C. Schnebly homestead. Because of its proximity, the new "highway" began to be called "Schnebly's Road," or "Schnebly Hill Road," and the "Munds Trail" designation soon fell into disuse.

The shortcut, which cost a total of 1800 dollars, served as the Sedona area's primary northern thoroughfare until a wagon road through Oak Creek Canyon was completed in 1914. In 1930 Schnebly Hill Road was reengineered but not paved, and most of its original route was abandoned. While it was no longer the main artery, plenty of activity took place there when Hollywood discovered Sedona in the 1920s. Many major western movies included action shot on Schnebly's accessible, awe-inspiring architecture.

It was a shock, then, when Sedonans found the road barricaded one day in 1950. The county denied owning it and chose not to maintain it.

Again a petition was circulated, and, in a series of public meetings, Sedona residents painstakingly reviewed records to show that all the county's legal requirements had been fulfilled by the pioneers, and that 1800 dollars of county funds had been expended. The road was reopened, but the matter still isn't totally settled.

My narrative (and our picnic lunch) had been punctuated from time to time with the sights and sounds of Schnebly Hill: a pickup truck loaded with firewood clattered down the hill; whiteface Herefords bellowed as they grazed among the junipers; three riders on horseback kicked up a cloud of red dust. Our guests drank it all in as I pointed out traces of the old roadbed.

In many ways, I realized that day, things really aren't much different from what they used to be on Schnebly Hill Road. I'm glad. I like it the way it is. Heaven forbid they should ever "improve" it.