Red Rock Country
Sedona
A small Arizona city ringed by towers and cliffs of red sandstone, with rules that keep buildings muted.
Why Sedona is red rock
Sedona lies in central Arizona, surrounded by buttes and cliffs of red sandstone. The rock was laid down as sand and mud hundreds of millions of years ago. A thin coating of iron oxide on the grains gives the red, which runs from orange to deep rust and is capped in places by paler stone. Green juniper and pine grow against it. The city has strict rules so that buildings and signs blend with the land. The best-known result is a fast-food restaurant whose usual yellow arches were made turquoise, since yellow was judged to clash with the rocks. The colours are strongest at sunrise and sunset. The area is home country of the Yavapai and Apache peoples.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Colours tied to Sedona
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Sedona, Arizona" on Wikipedia. If you know Sedona and we have it wrong, tell us.
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The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Santa Fe Us: Unknown author, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- Miami Beach Us: Massimo Catarinella, CC BY-SA 3.0, source
- New Orleans Us: thepipe26, CC BY 2.0, source
- Charleston Us: Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- San Francisco Us: Lightandtruth, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- New York Us: Z22, CC BY-SA 3.0, source