Destinations

Founded in 1928 as a community effort by a group of Flagstaff citizens, the Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) is a private, nonprofit institution that was originally established as a repository for Native American artifacts and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau. The original founders, zoologist Dr. Harold S. Colton and artist Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, who were from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were dedicated to preserving the history and cultures of northern Arizona.

Located in the historic Old Main building on Northern Arizona University’s north campus, the NAU Art Museum presents fine and contemporary art exhibitions featuring local, national and internationally renowned artists. The Marguerite Hettel Weiss Collection is displayed on the building’s third floor. This diverse collection includes paintings and sculptures by noted twentieth-century Mexican and American artists such as Diego Rivera and Francisco Zuniga and turn-of-the-century furniture and antiques. The second floor features six to eight temporary exhibitions of contemporary art yearly.

The Arizona Historical Society museums are located across the state in Flagstaff, Tempe, Tucson, and Yuma. Through programs and exhibitions, AHS museums describe the historical landscape now known as Arizona while, at the same time, they reflect the regional and cultural differences that shaped local communities.

Established in 1955 a few miles west of Flagstaff, Arizona, the Flagstaff station is the US Naval Observatory's dark-sky site for optical and near-infrared astronomy. There are presently two USNO sites in the Flagstaff area: this station (NOFS) and the Navy Prototype Optical Interferometer (NPOI), located some 15 miles south of the city.

Since the late 1970's, projects carried out at the Flagstaff Field Center have contributed to all aspects of the USGS mission, and a similarly diverse agenda is expected for the foreseeable future. Before the late 1970's, Center activities were more tightly focused on a high-priority national goal of space exploration.