Some say it's an anagram for "anodes," proof that powerful earth energies surge and swirl around red rock canyons and spires. Actually, Sedona is the name of a woman, one of the first pioneers drawn to what was once an isolated, rough land, where carving a life from the rocky soil meant hard work and even heartbreak.
Sedona's red rock country is a place of intensely blue skies, greens of every hue, and reds and golds from the palest peach to deep vermilion. The colorful buttes, spires, and canyons are carved from the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau, a vast upland extending around the Four Corners area of the Southwest. The southern edge of the plateau, the Mogollon (muggy-own) Rim, forms the escarpments to the north and east of Sedona.
From the Rim, rugged canyons extend like fingers. One, the canyon of Oak Creek, cuts through a 2,500-foot geological layer cake on its 12-mile length, revealing the power and majesty of a living, changing earth. For more than 300 million years, this land has been sculpted by oceans, deserts, swamps and volcanic flows.
