Picture Canyon Waterfall Loop

Dogs Leashed

Features Birding · Historical Significance · River/Creek · Waterfall · Wildflowers · Wildlife

Picture Canyon Natural & Cultural Preserve is a unique local treasure in Flagstaff. This place is notable for its Native American history, for flowing water and wetland habitats, and for Flagstaff's only year-round waterfall. Well-traveled trails lead to an overlook of the falls and to up-close views of the ancient petroglyphs, plus good wildlife viewing opportunities, all right here within Flagstaff city limits.

Picture Canyon is a very important cultural site in Northern Arizona. Please help protect these fragile resources by not touching petroglyphs, not carving on any rocks, leaving no trace and taking nothing home with you. Some of the historic sites are signed and others are not. That means you should tread carefully everywhere you go, but also means you can discover even more by always looking and listening carefully.

Picture Canyon's parking is within view of a water treatment plant, and some other city infrastructure, but the trails soon leave these surroundings behind and enter a pine-forested valley where wildlife might be spotted. A number of connected trails weave throughout the area. Some junctions are signed and others are not, because some of the paths are social trails rather than official trails.

To efficiently find the waterfall and then the largest petroglyph panels, follow the route mapped here, which goes counterclockwise beginning with Tom Moody Trail. Follow Tom Moody to the petroglyphs and then backtrack slightly to Don Weaver Trail, which heads back toward the parking area on the opposite side of the canyon.

You could complete a longer loop by taking all of the Tom Moody Trail or using the Flagstaff Loop/Arizona Trail where it passes through.

Ponderosa pines and juniper trees make up most of the forest. Reeds and sedges grow thick around the water in summer, and flowers color the hillsides. On the ponds you'll see ducks and maybe a great blue heron. In the meadows and woods you might see mule deer or even elk.

Today the year-round waterfall is fed by treated discharge from the wastewater facility, but in the past water flowed here naturally for much of the year. Perhaps that made this canyon an important cultural site for the Sinagua people. Their 1,000-year-old etchings on basalt outcrops are what Picture Canyon is named for, and many of them are still visible today.