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Wilson Mountain and Canyon are named after Dick Wilson. He was a bear huntin’ man from Arkansas – a man men didn’t wanna mess with. A tough frontier type.

But Wilson was civilized enough. After all, he was asked to protect the wife and two young children of another man named JJ Thompson, who was the first white settler in the Red Rock Country of northern Arizona Territory.

Now, if you’ll indulge me, I’m stealing and regurgitating the story of Wilson Mountain from a book called History, Hilarity and Heartbreak: Sedona Stories and More by a woman named Loretta Benore. They sell this book at the Sedona Heritage Museum. It’s not a banger. Tourists generally don’t care about the pioneer days of Sedona. But I do, and I just want to share why the area I photographed the other day is called Wilson Canyon.

But, first, this JJ Thompson character… Thompson settled, specifically, in Oak Creek Canyon (OCC), at an area that has come to be known as Indian Gardens, which, today, is about three miles north of OCC’s mouth, where Uptown Sedona now is. (I live right around here.)

Indian Gardens is called such because there was an already-growing garden of corn, beans and squash in this part of OCC that had been planted by Yavapai-Apache for years. However, the last of these renegade Indians had been forcibly removed to a reservation six months before Thompson’s arrival, and were no longer tending to this garden. Thompson, as of 1876, now would.

By 1885, Thompson – who was born in Ireland; stowawayed to America; ended up in Texas; fought for the Confederacy; drifted into Colorado; and then into the Red Rock country – was married with two children. Thompson now had a cabin and farm-garden at Indian Gardens, and Thompson hired the bear-huntin’ Wilson to help him with this farm-garden

Thompson also had another cabin at the mouth of Oak Creek Canyon. His family would go back and forth between the two, for whatever reason.

One day, still in 1885, Thompson had business in Prescott. That was probably a ten-hour wagon ride from Indian Gardens. Maybe longer. Thompson would be gone for like a week.

Because OCC was mostly wilderness, and still hosting grizzly bears, and perhaps other undesirable things, Thompson wanted Wilson to work the farm-garden during the day, and stay in the vicinity of his other cabin at the canyon mouth, where Thompson’s wife and children were gonna’ stay.

Obviously, Thompson had full confidence in the moral integrity of the bear-hunting Wilson. Thompson entrusted his wife and children to him.

But Thompson misjudged Wilson – though not in the way you might think.

See, bear-hunting Wilson really liked to hunt bears. Apparently, right before Thompson left for Prescott, Wilson had come across the tracks of a huge grizzly, who had probably made his home somewhere in the side canyon now called Wilson Canyon, which is between Indian Gardens and the OCC mouth. (Midgley Bridge now spans Wilson Canyon.)

Thompson agreed to take Wilson’s big caliber rifle to Prescott for repairs, but only if Wilson agreed not to hunt the grizzly, with Wilson’s small-caliber rifle, until Thompson returned from Prescott, with Wilson’s big gun repaired.

Wilson agreed to this. But he did not comply.

Apparently, as was pieced together by those who found his body, on the very first afternoon Thompson was gone, Wilson, on the path to protect Thompson’s wife and children for the evening, saw the big grizzly, and couldn’t help himself. He got distracted and forgot his promise.

He had to kill that grizzly. It didn’t matter to Wilson that he had only his small gun. Wilson grew up in the Arkansas wilds and had been killin’ bear his whole life. He knew what he was doing. At least he thought so.

Wilson shot the bear, but the bear didn’t die. Wilson followed the bear into that side canyon – above or below where Midgley Bridge now is I’m not sure – and the wounded bear charged Wilson. The bear tore off half of Wilson’s face, but he survived, and crawled to a puddle, and put his face in the water, and drowned in that puddle.

His body was found a week later by distant neighbors going into OCC to fish. All that time Thompson’s wife and children had no idea what had happened, and had no one else to ask for help. Wilson didn’t fulfill his promise to Thompson for even one night. Wilson probably died that first night.

Nonetheless, to keep the memory of Dick Wilson from Arkansas alive, they named a canyon and mountain after him.

That’s Midgley Bridge you see in the photos which, again, spans the mouth of Wilson Canyon, which is a side or lateral canyon to the main channel of Oak Creek Canyon.

Though I’ve explored the photographed area several times before, on a perfectly sunny Tuesday the 3rd of March in the year of our Lord 2026, I thought I’d see what I could capture with my Nikon and Samsung.

I don’t regard these photos as wall-hangers. But I don’t care. My mentality is changed. Not every shot has to be epic. It’s all about capturing interesting impressions, and doing the best you can to make those impressions as impressionable as possible.

I’ll share my Samsungs in a later post.