HOW
REAL ESTATE GOT STARTED IN SEDONA
As a realtor
and a twelve-plus years resident of Sedona, I was always curious
about the early beginnings of land development in our community.
According to historians, back in 1945, Sedona was just a tiny
dot on the banks of Oak Creek, mainly consisting of a school,
a ranger station and a combination general store/café/gas
station/post office/ice house.
Just about
a mile to the west (on Highway 89A) was an open area near beautiful
red rock cliffs called Grasshopper Flats. It seemed an ideal site
for home building. Property was selling for $10-$25 an acre, even
less if you were talking cash. The trouble was people had already
tried “dry farming” there without success. There just
wasn’t enough water.
In
1948, a geologist named Carl Williams came to Sedona to regain
his health. He met up with Fanny Belle Gulick, one of Grasshopper
Flat’s largest landholders. Known as a sharp business woman
(she denied being a former madame), the widow Gulick and Williams
made a deal. He could drill for water on her land, if he wanted
to. If a well came in, Williams would get a deed to several acres
of her property, and they would part friends.
Sedona ~ 1945
Williams
met with the local “water experts”. The U.S. Forest
Service Ranger, also a geologist, said that as far as he knew
there was no appreciable underground water. A member of the Arizona
University geology department concurred. Their findings, however,
failed to satisfy Williams. He studied the heavy snowfall on the
Mogollon Rim. He studied Sedona’s 12 inches or less of precipitation.
He calculated precipitation minus evaporation minus transpiration
minus natural run-off and discovered there was a large amount
of unaccounted-for water. Since he knew about Page Springs’
water output and the centuries-old water supply in Montezuma’s
Well, it seemed only reasonable that the excess water had to be
somewhere. It certainly wasn’t pouring out of the nearby
red cliffs.
Williams’
instincts told him there had to be fissures and crevices feeding
the hidden flow into aquifiers. He guessed that the aquifiers
were located right under his feet. And so he dug, and the widow
Gulick’s well came in exactly where he predicted it would.
After that discovery, Williams and his son purchased two well-digging
rigs and drilled more than 50 successful wells in the same area.
With
water now readily available in Grasshopper Flats, the real estate
industry was born. Residential housing gradually started to move
away from the creek into what is today West Sedona.
It happens that West Sedona is where I reside, and knowing the
story of how the area actually came into being has added a unique
richness to my life. There are many lovely homes for sale here
and I would love to have the pleasure of showing some of them
to you. Who knows? Maybe one day we could end up being neighbors.
There is one thing, though, that you should be prepared for. Land
prices are now considerably higher than $25 an acre!
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