Oak Creek Canyon Reopens After Wildfire

Gates are now unlocked and tape has been taken down in much of northern Arizona’s Oak Creek Canyon with the reopening of many areas that were closed nearly three months because of a major wildfire.

That’s good news for visitors and businesses alike, with innkeeper Frank Garrison telling the Arizona Daily Sun that it’s starting to feel like a normal fall.

The threat of flooding prompted the Forest Service to close its land within the canyon in July.

Much of the canyon wasn’t scarred by the fire, but thousands of acres in the canyon and above it were.

A forest recovery official says it’ll take grasses and shrubs in some areas about three years to return but many more years for trees to recover.