The new age crowd was assimilated into Sedona with a surprising lack of friction. "These people are interesting, and they don't bother anyone," said Ivan Finley, Sedona's mayor in the late 1990s.

"And how can you quarrel with them? Even for those of us who don't dance in circles, it's hard to live here and not be a little bit spiritual. It's a humbling place."

Still, the U.S. Forest Service sometimes complains about the stone medicine wheels that people build – and leave – in the wilderness.

The new age migrants were not the first to be drawn to this mystical place. American Indian tribes, including the Yavapai and later the Tonto Apache, were drawn there as early as 1300 A.D. They were driven off the land by the U.S. Army in the 1870s after gold was discovered in nearby Prescott. (You can find well-preserved cave paintings and rock art all around Sedona. The Palatki Ruins, a few miles out of town, are especially good.)

Sedona took its name, in 1902, from the given name of the wife of Carl Schnebly, an early postmaster. He'd initially wanted to call the place "Schnebly Station," but Schnebly was, perhaps fortunately, too long for a postage cancellation stamp. (It's hard to imagine, more than a century later, a minivan named the Kia Schnebly.)

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