Sedona Red Rock Country & Jerome Ghost Town

A Mexican colonial-style arts complex built in the 1970s in deliberate reference to the craft market town of San Tlaquepaque near Guadalajara — shaded arcades, tiled fountains, sycamore courtyards, and 45 independently owned galleries and artisan studios set within stucco buildings. The galleries focus on Southwestern fine art: bronze sculpture, Navajo weaving, raku pottery, and plein-air landscape painting. The quality of work here is higher than the Uptown tourist strip; the chapel courtyard with its iron bell tower is the most architectural space.

The Sedona Arts Center — founded in 1958 and still operating as a community art gallery and studio space — is the oldest cultural institution in the red rock country. The Uptown Sedona stretch north of the Y-intersection shows the full range of Sedona's identity: serious galleries, crystal healing shops, vortex tour operators, and Jeep tour outfitters share the same block. Sedona's New Age culture (the town is built on supposed spiritual 'vortexes' in the rock) is itself culturally interesting as an American phenomenon.

A Roman Catholic chapel built directly into the red sandstone cliffs south of Sedona — commissioned by sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude, who conceived the design after seeing the Empire State Building in 1932, and completed in 1956 with design influence from Frank Lloyd Wright's office. The chapel cantilevers from the cliff face between two red rock buttes, with a 90-foot concrete cross integrated into the structure's exterior. The interior is simple and spare; the view from the approach path looks back at the surrounding buttes with the chapel frame in the foreground.

Sedona's premier resort on Oak Creek — French country-style cottages set in a creek-side garden with red rock canyon walls rising above. The restaurant terrace overlooks the creek and the canyon. Tomorrow's drive to Jerome is 30 minutes north on US-89A.

The 1916 adobe mansion built by James S. 'Rawhide Jimmy' Douglas overlooking his Little Daisy copper mine — now the centerpiece of Jerome State Historic Park. Douglas built the mansion with billiard room, wine cellar, and a dedicated wine elevator to watch over his mine operations; the building gives a clear view down to the mine's original headframe and processing areas. The museum inside covers Jerome's boom (peak population 15,000 in the early 20th century, making it Arizona's third largest city), the mine disasters and labor strikes, and the collapse to near-ghost-town status by the 1950s.

Jerome's main commercial street climbs 1,500 feet of elevation from the bottom of Cleopatra Hill to the ridge above — one of the steepest main streets of any American town. The former mine-era hotels, brothels, and commercial buildings have been converted to art galleries, studios, wine bars, and restaurants as the artist community that colonized the near-ghost-town in the 1960s became permanent. The Jerome Historical Society Mine Museum (oldest museum in Clarkdale-Jerome area) covers the mining operations in detail; the Sliding Jail (a 1928 jailhouse that literally slid 225 feet downhill due to mine blast destabilization) is visible off the main street.

A privately operated historic mine site above Jerome — less polished than the state park museum but more tactile and hands-on. Original 1890s mining equipment sits in its working positions: stamp mills, ore cars, a headframe, and a functioning 1939 generator. The ghost town collection includes antique automobiles left in their original positions among the mine structures, with donkeys roaming the property. The site is owned and operated by Don Robertson, a mining historian whose family connection to Jerome goes back generations.