Walnut Canyon National Monument takes its name from the Black Walnut trees found at the bottom of the canyon. It is unusual to find them at an elevation of nearly 6,700 feet.

The National Monument was established by proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson on November 30, 1915, to protect the ancient cliff dwellings of a vanished people. These remains are of great educational, ethnological, and other scientific interest and it is the purpose of the National Park Service to preserve them as near as possible in their original state. Small sections of fallen walls have been repaired and some of the mud plaster or mortar replaced, but no room is more than 10 per cent repaired.

The cliff dwellings were discovered by pioneers and in 1883 James Stevenson visited Walnut Canyon for the Smithsonian Institution. For many years the main road from Flagstaff to Winslow, now Highway 66, ran within a few rods of Walnut Canyon and brought numerous visitors even in horse and buggy days. Promiscuous digging in Indian ruins, “pot hunting,” was then a popular pastime, and the remains of Walnut Canyon suffered from thoughtless individuals who were seeking relics.

In 1921 Dr. Harold S. Colton, director of the Museum of Northern Arizona, made a survey of the cliff dwellings in Walnut Canyon and located 120 sites, which include more than 400 rooms. Perhaps not all the rooms were occupied at the same time but conservative estimates place the maximum population at 500 to 600 Indians.