# @downinnadesert on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd1Ps5emytZ
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/71151559-downinnadesert-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/96ff0cb4a8.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-09-28T13:02:04.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Down In The Desert🌵 (@downinnadesert) — https://gondola.cc/downinnadesert

## Caption

Arizona’s tallest mountain is sacred to Hopi, Navajo and other tribes, and for more than a decade the ski resort on it has been making snow out of treated wastewater.

The San Francisco Peaks sit on federal land in the Coconino National Forest north of Flagstaff. Humphreys Peak is the highest point in the state. For Hopi people, the mountain is home to the kachina spirits and is central to religious practice. For the Navajo Nation it is one of the four sacred mountains that mark the boundaries of the homeland. Other tribes in the region hold it sacred too.

Arizona Snowbowl operates there under a federal permit. Tribes have objected to the resort’s growth going back to at least 1969, when it proposed adding shops, restaurants and lodges.

In the early 2000s the City of Flagstaff agreed to sell Snowbowl reclaimed wastewater so it could make artificial snow in a place that does not reliably get enough. The Forest Service approved it after an environmental review.

Then came about twenty years of litigation.

In March 2007 a panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled for the tribes, finding the approval violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The following year the full Ninth Circuit reversed that decision, and the US Supreme Court declined to take the case.

The pipeline went in around 2011. Protests started and have never really stopped.

The Hopi Tribe then sued Snowbowl in Arizona state court, arguing the snowmaking is a public nuisance because reclaimed water reaches shrines, springs and areas used for ceremony, and because practitioners have stopped going to places they had always gone.

A trial judge dismissed it. The Arizona Court of Appeals reinstated it. In November 2018 the Arizona Supreme Court reversed again, 5 to 2, holding that environmental damage to public land with religious or cultural significance is not a special injury for public nuisance purposes.

Every court that heard the tribes’ religious claims rejected them. Snowbowl still makes snow.

Everything above comes from court records.

#SanFranciscoPeaks #Flagstaff #ArizonaHistory #ArizonaNews #DownInnaDesert

## Stats

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## Tags

downinnadesert, flagstaff, arizonahistory, arizonanews, sanfranciscopeaks

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