T.C. Schnebly and the Town Named After His Wife

Theodore Carlton Schnebly arrived in Oak Creek Canyon in nineteen oh one with his wife Sedona and the intention of raising fruit. He cleared land, planted apple and peach trees on a homestead that caught the red-rock light in ways that would eventually make the area one of the most photographed landscapes in the American Southwest. But in nineteen oh one it was just a canyon with good soil and a man trying to grow something.

In nineteen oh two, Schnebly decided the settlement needed a post office. He wrote to the postal authorities in Washington proposing two names, both taken from his property deed. The postal authorities wrote back saying both names were too long for a postal designation. T.C.'s brother Ellsworth, who had settled nearby, suggested a third option: the name of T.C.'s wife.

Sedona Arabella Miller had grown up in Gorin, Missouri. She was practical in ways her husband was not always. She managed the homestead, raised their children, and kept the operation running while T.C. pursued various ventures across the region. She had come to Arizona because her husband wanted to come. She was the competent one.

The post office opened in nineteen oh two as Sedona. T.C. eventually moved on to other places and other enterprises. Sedona Schnebly remained. She outlived him by decades. The canyon that artists began painting in the nineteen twenties, the vortex destination of the nineteen eighties and nineties, the town of three million annual visitors, carries her name. A practical woman from Missouri. She did not name it after herself. Her brother-in-law did.