San Francisco Peaks - History

History

In 1629, one hundred and forty seven years before San Francisco, California, received that name, Spanish friars founded a mission at a Hopi Indian village in honor of St. Francis, sixty five miles from the Peaks. 17th century Franciscans at Oraibi village gave the name San Francisco to the peaks to honor St. Francis of Assisi, the founder of their order. The mountain man Antoine Leroux visited the San Francisco Peaks in the mid-1850s, and guided several American expeditions exploring and surveying northern Arizona. Leroux guided them to the only reliable spring, one on the western side of the Peaks, which was later named Leroux Springs.

Around 1877, John Willard Young, a son of the Mormon leader Brigham Young, claimed the area around Leroux Springs, and he built Fort Moroni, a log stockade, to house railroad tie-cutters for the Atlantic & Pacific Railroad, which was then being built across northern Arizona.

In 1898, U.S. President William McKinley established the San Francisco Mountain Forest Reserve, at the request of Gifford Pinchot, the head of the U.S. Division of Forestry. The local reaction was hostile—citizens of Williams, Arizona, held a significant protest, and the Williams News editorialized that the reserve "virtually destroys Coconino County." In 1908, the San Francisco Mountain Forest Reserve became a part of the new Coconino National Forest.

In 2002, Arizona Snowbowl, the ski resort on the peaks, proposed a plan to expand and begin snowmaking using reclaimed water made of treated sewage effluent. A coalition of Indian tribes and environmental groups sued the Coconino National Forest, which leases the land to the ski resort, in an attempt to stop this proposed expansion, citing serious impacts to cultural practitioners, public health risks, and environmental concerns.

In 2011, construction began on a wastewater pipeline to the Peaks. In response, there has been an ongoing series of protest actions including demonstrations, encampments, and multiple lockdowns in which protesters have locked themselves to construction equipment. Notable protesters include Navajo musician Klee Benally, singer/guitarist for the punk rock band Blackfire, who has been arrested twice since protests began.