What you'll find is 1000-year old rock paintings by the Northern Sinagua people.
You get there by pulling off old Route 66 (eastbound), which nowadays is nestled just south of Flagstaff mall, and is the nicer way to get to Walnut Canyon. Pull off just before the wastewater treatment plant, next to a depleted cinder cone. Drive up as far as the plant and park up. There's a gate which you can walk through, back towards the back of the water plant and head towards the Rio de Flag. Cross and follow the river, keeping the river to your left.
Picture canyon is found a mile or so from where you parked your car, where the river narrows and steepens and turns into a riffle as it passes over large boulders. The canyon is some 30 or so metres deep.
You can access the canyon relatively easily where the river starts to flatten again. The view upstream from where the petroglyphs on river-right can be observed:
And some of the petroglyphs on the canyon wall on river-right:
There are hundreds of pictures painted on the rocks. Apparently the most impressive specimens are on the larger boulders down towards the river. However, when we were there snow was likely covering most of these larger boulder faces. The view downstream from here is:
You'll have to scramble over and around large boulders to get to the paintings!
More details about access to the site can be found here (I found this website well after trying to find the place!) and here.
We found it hard to cross the river inside the canyon so we walked down the floodplain a mile or so until we found a bridge (this actually brings you onto the Arizona Trail)
We then walked back up the other side of the river to the canyon paintings on river left:
As you can see it's well worth the trip back up, because the river-left petroglyphs are, in my opinion, even more spectacular and accessible. The view downstream from the river left site is here:
A few more before I go. Enjoy!
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