Native Peoples
Harold Sellers Colton, who gave the Sinagua the name by which we know them, began the first archeological survey of Walnut Canyon in 1921. By 1930, stimulated by Colton and his wife Mary's enthusiasm, Flagstaff residents founded the Museum of Northern Arizona. In 1932, Colton and colleague Lyndon Hargrave finished the first excavation and restoration of a Walnut Canyon ruin.
Between 1940 and 1985, archeologists conducted 17 studies at the Monument. They have completely surveyed both the north and south canyon rims and most of the canyon itself. The surface archaeological data of the Sinagua include cliff dwellings, pueblos, field houses, pithouses, a community room, fortifications, petroglyphs and extensive artifact scatters, in spite of the fact that extensive looting occurred for more than half a century. On the south rim, 38 sites have been recorded, while 104 sites are recorded on the north rim.
The oldest artifact discovered at Walnut Canyon is a projectile point dated to 8,000 years ago, a remnant left by hunters and gatherers of the Pinto culture. But it is the Sinagua who were the primary residents of this area between arriving about 500 and disappearing by 1300 AD. These ancient dry farmers are identified by a number of traits including the use of a fine-paste pottery called Alameda Brownware.
Along the rims of Walnut Canyon, evidence of Sinagua farming devices such as check dams are preserved. They are frequent and intact enough to provide the best archaeological evidence of these features in the Flagstaff area. These cultural resources hold nationally significant values for scientific assessment of the prehistoric Sinagua settlement and land-use patterns.
For reasons unknown, the Sinagua abandoned the Walnut Canyon area between 900 and 1100 AD, then returned to build most of the cliff dwellings and occupy the area for the next 200 years. A similar pattern at Wupatki is explained by the eruption of Sunset Crater Volcano.
Exploration & Settlement
By the early 1880s, before Smithsonian Institution scientists "discovered the ruins of Walnut Canyon in 1883, the Sinagua cliff dwellings had become a popular local destination for picnics, club outings and treasure hunting.
When John Wesley Powell, who had navigated the Grand Canyon in 1869 and was now head of the U.S. Geological Survey, and James Stevenson visited the area in in 1885, they were joined by lumber magnate Michael Riordan, who was recuperating from tuberculosis in nearby Flagstaff.
Riordan was probably the best known and most self-publicized of those pothunters who explored the ruins and removed artifacts over the next 25 years. But as early as 1891, local citizens became alarmed at the scale of looting and destruction of ruins, which occasionally involved dynamiting walls and rooms to allow for more light.
The Chamber of Commerce, recognizing the tourist value of the ruins, denounced the mutilation of the cliff dwellings in 1891, but no formal steps were taken to protect the ruins until they became part of the San Francisco Mountain Forest Preserve in 1904. Administered by the Bureau of Forestry (later the U.S. Forest Service) an aging Civil War veteran William Henry Pierce, was placed at Walnut Canyon named ranger in charge of the area.
Park History
The campaign to make Walnut Creek a national monument began as a grass roots movement about 1910. After the successful circulation of a petition by local concerned citizens, Presidential Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the ruins a national monument November 30, 1915.
Although most national monuments were transferee from the U.S. Forest Service to the National Park Service in 1916 (thus affording them greater care and protection), looting of Walnut Canyon ruins continued until it was finally transferred in 1934. When the monument was expanded to its current size of 1,920 acres by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1938, it acquired the resources necessary to protect the ruins while making them available to visitors.
Natural History
Plants & Animals
Walnut Canyon lies in an ecozone between the Montane forests along the crest of the Mogollon Rim Plateau and the desert regions of the Little Colorado Valley. Ponderosa Pine forests are dominant to the west and south and overlap with the Pinyon/Juniper woodlands to the east and north. Micro-environments, created by the meandering course of the canyon, make Walnut Canyon unique to its surroundings and offering a rich habitat for plants and animals and therefore attracting the first people to utilize the diverse resources found here.
Geology
The 400-foot-deep Walnut Canyon meanders through Permian-age Kalbab Limestone and Toroweap Sandstone formations to the Mogollon Rim Plateau then northeast toward the Little Colorado River. Very little water runs in Walnut Creek anymore, because it is held back in Lake Mary which provides water for the city of Flagstaff.
The Sinagua built their cliff dwellings in the low-ceiling alcoves of the lower portion of Kaibab Limestone, which surfaces most of the Coconino Plateau and and rims both the Grand Canyon and Walnut Canyon. Below these thick, resistant ledges of limestone, sandstones of the Toroweap Formation occur near the canyon bottom. Both these formations were deposited near the shores of the ancient Kaibab Sea about 275 million years ago.
The Kaibab Limestone here contains significant amounts of dolomoite, which differs from limestone because it contains magnesium in addition to calcium carbonate. Along the trails to ruins, fossils occur in the Kaibab Formation, including snails, clams and a plump brachiopod called Dictyoclostus.
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