The Arizona State Parks Foundation presents the 4th Annual Slide Rock Apple Festival on September 20th-21st, 2008 from 9 am to 3 pm at Slide Rock State Park. Slide Rock State Park is located just north of Sedona in Oak Creek Canyon.
This family event will feature "All Things Apple" and the use of natural, renewable resources through demonstrations emphasizing the theme "Moving Toward Sustainable Living." Arts and crafts, food, entertainment, games and activities for kids, a bird walking tour, history walk, a dessert auction, an Apple Fest cookbook, and prize giveaways will be additional features of the event. Volunteers will also be demonstrating the art of sorting different sizes of apples for boxing and selling. Both days of the Apple Festival are free to the public.
To get to Slide Rock State Park from Phoenix go north on I-17 to Hwy 179, west through Sedona to Hwy 89A north, and then seven miles up Oak Creek Canyon. From Flagstaff take Hwy 89A and go 20 miles south.
For many years, Slide Rock State Park was a large orchard and today is still a working commercial apple ranch producing more than 1,200 boxes of apples in 2007 in the park. An original vintage 30-foot-long apple-sorting machine reconstructed by volunteers is still in the historic Pendley apple shed.
Frank L. Pendley arrived in the canyon in 1907 and acquired the land title as part of the Homestead Act in 1910. He put in the irrigation system and planted the apple orchard in 1912. In 1933 he built the rustic cabins seen in the park today. It was sold to the Arizona Parklands Foundation for $3.6 million in 1984 to become a State Park.