Sedona Heritage Museum

The Sedona Heritage Museum occupies one of the most historically significant properties in Sedona — the Pendley homestead, a 1920s-1930s working apple orchard farm that represents the agricultural roots of a community now known worldwide for tourism and spiritual retreat. The museum preserves this history with a combination of original structures, period furnishings, farming equipment, and interpretive exhibits that give families a genuine sense of what early Sedona life looked like.

For children, the most immediately engaging elements are tactile and visual: the original fruit orchards still growing on the property, the authentic apple packing equipment in the historic shed, the horse-drawn farming tools, and the photographs and artifacts of homestead life in the 1920s and 30s. Walking through a working piece of living history — where the apple trees planted by the original settlers still bear fruit each autumn — connects children to the land in ways that purely exhibit-based museums cannot.

The Hollywood history section is a particular draw for older children and teens. Sedona served as the backdrop for over 80 Hollywood films, particularly Westerns, from the 1940s through the 1970s. John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Rock Hudson all filmed here.

The museum documents this cinematic history through vintage movie posters, behind-the-scenes photos, and artifacts that reveal how Sedona's red rock landscape became shorthand for the American West in popular culture.

The museum is small — most families complete the visit in about an hour — and is best positioned as part of a broader Uptown Sedona itinerary. Open daily 11am to 3pm. Admission is modest; children are often free or discounted. Check sedonamuseum.org for current pricing.