Coconino National Forest

The land around Flagstaff had been managed, named, and contested long before the federal government got around to formalizing it. What began in 1898 as the San Francisco Mountains National Forest Reserve became, in 1908, the Coconino National Forest — the name drawn from the Hopi word for the Havasupai and Yavapai peoples who had lived here for centuries before that. Today the forest covers roughly 1.8 million acres, swinging from high desert scrub near the Verde River to alpine tundra above 11,000 feet, with Humphreys Peak — Arizona's highest point at 12,633 feet — anchoring the north. Come for the ponderosa pine. Stay because the scale of it refuses to be managed.