Tag Archives: Sedona

More Arizona Travel Tips

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Next time you saddle up for Scottsdale or Sedona, these tips are for you!

Western Spirit: Museum of the West

Scottsdale, Southwest, purse

photo: Vicki Weisfeld

Scottsdale’s two-year-old Museum of the West houses a changing array of artwork, artifacts and memorabilia related to the history and culture of the Southwest. Only two exhibits are permanent: a recreated town street, with the kinds of stuff people needed in the Old West (guns and gambling equipment) and a display of remarkable Indian pottery, in the works.

The special exhibits when I visited included paintings by the Taos Society of Artists and a fantastic collection of fancy saddles, spurs, and other cowboy paraphernalia.

The museum has an enclosed sculpture courtyard, whose walls evoke basket-weaving and the state’s copper-mining history and a nice shop where I bought this handbag.

The museum is in Old Town Scottsdale (3830 North Marshall Way), close to everybody’s favorite 1950s pink palace for desserts, The Sugar Bowl.

McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park

Got the kids? Just a mile or two up Scottsdale Road, this Railroad Park may be the perfect  blowing-off-steam spot after a museum visit and sugar high. The 30-acre park includes playgrounds, a mini-trainride around the property, classic carousel, and loads of fun exhibits. You can tour the actual Presidential Pullman cars used by Presidents Hoover, FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower, which are nothing at all like Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor accommodations, believe me. The museum also boasts a 10,000-square-foot model train exhibit. There’s lots of room to run around, picnic facilities, summer concerts, and snacks too.

Scottsdale Railroad Park

photo: Vicki Weisfeld

Especially noteworthy is the train car emblazoned with coats-of-arms of regions of France. After World War II, the United States sent France a 250-car train packed with donated relief supplies. The following year, the French people reciprocated with the “thank you” (“Merci”) train, which had 49 railway cars like this one. The French people had nothing to spare, yet “generously gave what was most dear to their hearts”—toys, war medals, wedding dresses, musical instruments, handmade lace, and much, much more.

Tuzigoot National Monument

Tuzigoot National Monument, Sedona, Indian

photo: Alan English CPA, creative commons license

The National Park Service pairs this set of ruins, located north of Phoenix near Sedona, with Montezuma’s Castle. The two make an interesting contrast. The Castle (not visited) is a Sinaguan dwelling nestled in a high cliff, whereas Tuzigoot pueblo is located atop a hill with a fantastic 360-degree view of the Verde Valley.

At one time, Tuzigoot was a settlement of some two hundred people near the tree-lined Verde River. (There’s a nice walk along the river from Cottonwood, as well). It was an ideal situation, strategically, though the idea of having to get everything (like water) up that hill is daunting! Today, you can drive it, and will want to do so before the sun gets too hot.

Also near Sedona: Clarkdale’s eye-popping Copper Art Museum

Southwest Reading Adventures

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy – Reading McCarthy’s bracing prose is a test of nerves, and unforgettable
The Far Empty by J. Todd Scott – one of the best thrillers I read last year, set in west Texas Big Bend Country
The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson – picked up on the recommendation of the crime fiction mavens at The Poisoned Pen (your local bookstore, no matter where you live!)

Sedona Area’s Astonishing Copper Museum

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Shell Casing Art, Copper Art Museum

Shell Casing Art, photo: Vicki Weisfeld

The tiny town of Clarkdale, Arizona, midway between Cottonwood and Jerome, in the outskirts of the much-visited Sedona region, hosts the not-to-be-missed Copper Art Museum. One of the first metals humans discovered—it and gold are the only ones that have a “color”—copper has been mined and worked for ten thousand years. Clarkdale was a company town for copper mining in the nearby mountains.

Through imaginative displays in the town’s former high school (built 1928), visitors see much more than art, they get a taste of mineralogy, astronomy, and history, plus the beautiful and varied ways copper has been put to use in architectural decoration, kitchens, winemaking, and war. Who knew?

On display are 525 brass (copper + zinc) artillery shell casings that World War I soldiers scavenged and transformed into one-of-a-kind artworks, startlingly intricate molds inspiring lavish desserts, religious works and paintings on copper, a wall of beer steins.

The extent of the collection suggests a seriousness of purpose, yet the curators have a light touch. They include yearbook pages from the high school, binding the current use of the building to its past. They include amusing and interesting “fast facts,” such as details about various copper-related crimes. They explain why copper is the desired material for certain medical uses, doorknobs, and in jewelry. And they provide a straight-faced set of definitions for carrot, caret, carat, and karat, for the confused. You make your way through the museum following copper footprints embedded in the floor.

There’s something fascinating and beautiful for everyone here!

Crime novels set in and around Arizona:

The Sinister Pig – A disused Mexican copper mine figures in this Tony Hillerman classic
The Blue Hammer – Ross MacDonald’s Lew Archer and a leggy blonde in the desert
Rage Against the Dying – female protagonist takes on a serial killer in Becky Masterman’s exciting debut

Or pick your own mayhem at Scottsdale’s fantastic Poisoned Pen Bookstore, 4014 N. Goldwater Boulevard. Floor-to-ceiling mysteries, thrillers, and crime and 300 author events a year!