For more than 100 years, the Parks General Store has not only been a place to shop, but a place for the community to gather.
Parks was originally called Maine. While accounts vary, the Williams-Grand Canyon News archives report that John T. Dennis started the Maine Post Office in a boxcar depot in 1898. It moved two miles north in 1907.
In the 1920s, Harold Longfellow and Harold Cameron established a tourist stop with a filling station and grocery store, according to information from “Mountain Town – Flagstaff’s First Century” by Platt Cline.
The store eventually became the Parks General Store. The store still has the original flooring and stove today and is a great place to stop and take in the fresh mountain air and get a bite to eat.
The Keyhole Sink Trail, around the corner from Parks, provides the visitor with an easy to hike pathway to a scenic box canyon where prehistoric residents left their mark carved into the canyon’s gray volcanic walls.