America's dark sky city at 7,000 feet and the Route 66 gateway to the Grand Canyon — where Flagstaff sits in a ponderosa pine forest on the Colorado Plateau at an elevation of 7,000 feet (2,134 m — the highest elevation of any major American city and the highest point on Route 66), the Lowell Observatory (1894 — the private observatory where Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh) rises on a hill above the downtown on Mars Hill Road, the San Francisco Peaks (the San Francisco volcanic field's dominant peak, Humphreys Peak at 3,851 m — the highest point in Arizona) loom above the city to the north and are sacred to both the Hopi and Navajo peoples, the Grand Canyon's South Rim is 90 minutes north on US-180 and AZ-64, and Flagstaff is the only city in America to have passed a permanent outdoor lighting ordinance (1958) that has made it the best place in the contiguous USA to observe the Milky Way from an urban location
Flagstaff (76,000 city; 145,000 metro) is the county seat of Coconino County, the largest county by area in the contiguous United States, and the highest-elevation city in the American Southwest — a mountain university town and outdoor recreation base on the Colorado Plateau, surrounded by the world's largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest. Flagstaff is the primary base for Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Sedona, and Wupatki National Monument visits.
The Colorado Plateau around Flagstaff has been continuously inhabited for over 10,000 years — the Sinagua people (whose name means 'without water' in Spanish, coined by archaeologists referring to their dry farming techniques) built the cliff dwellings at Walnut Canyon (13 km east) between approximately 1100–1250 CE before abandoning the site, possibly due to drought. The Hopi people are considered the likely descendants of the Sinagua, and the San Francisco Peaks above Flagstaff are one of the most sacred sites in the Hopi religious landscape (the Kachina spirits live in the peaks). The Atla…