After six years of planning, construction, road narrowing, explosions, rock removal, grading and paving in Uptown, the Forest Road Extension is finally open.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on Monday, May 12. We’ve covered the long process to build the road that dates back to the late 1990s, when such an extension was first proposed to connect to an extension of Ranger Road at State Route 89A — back when the “Y” was still an intersection and still Y-shaped — as part of traffic improvements throughout Uptown.

Not counting those plans 30 years ago, we’ve had no fewer than four reporters covering the current process from its initial approval in 2019 to the beginning of construction in 2022 through the final work, and at last, the paving and opening on Monday.

We covered the Sedona City Council discussions and votes on the project and the first work at the top of the road as crews began clearing and grading the upper portion. We also covered the temporary morning closures of SR 89A as technicians began blasting the rock to break up the future roadway. The blasting itself was relatively quiet from several hundred feet away before a column of red rock dust blew across the highway in the moments afterward.

Our Sedona photojournalist, David Jolkovski, shot at least a dozen photo assignments showing the progression of the work, in addition to aerial footage to show readers what wasn’t visible from the ground.

In this spring’s Lifestyles of Sedona magazine, Jolkovski put those photos together into a package so readers could see how the untouched draw was carved into a path, then paved into a proper roadway.

According to the Sedona Public Works Department, the total cost of the road was $17.6 million as of April 2025. Connecting it to a roundabout with an extension of Ranger Road is still years down the line and will involve the Arizona Department of Transportation taking the lead with the work in its right-of-way on the highway, although the city could start on Ranger Road in the interim years and have it prepped, leaving ADOT’s work as the final piece in the puzzle.

Whether the costs, work and effort are ultimately worth it will only be determined further down the road, but residents in the city can take pride in the fact that the Forest Road extension is now complete and drivers have an alternate route from the bottom of Cooks Hill.

In a traffic pinch, lots of Uptown residents and workers have cut through the Hyatt Piñon Point to avoid backups, but then have had to navigate a parking lot crowded with tourists, residents and hotel guests. Still, on some days when backups on SR 179 pushed traffic back on SR 89A to Forest Road well into Uptown, the Forest Road Extension will eliminate that need by providing an alternate route devoid of pedestrians.

The overall effects on traffic will not be detectable in the first week or the first month, but rather over time as Sedona residents, returning visitors and new tourists take advantage of the extension to get themselves into Uptown by avoiding the Brewer Road roundabout, the “Y” roundabout and the upper connection of Forest Road and State Route 89A to get into Uptown.

On Monday morning, as I passed through the zipper merge on SR 89A, with morning traffic heading into Uptown backed up to L’Auberge Lane, I wondered how many of these drivers heading to work or their Uptown homes will opt for the extension not because it has less traffic but because it’s actually the shorter route to their Uptown destination than going through the “Y” roundabout.

Granted, this will not alleviate all the pressure on the Uptown roads; only a dedicated connection between uptown and West Sedona will do that — perhaps by following the old dirt roads from upper Uptown to Soldier Pass Road that residents used to use to avoid the highway before housing, construction and other developments closed off these routes after the city incorporated in 1988. Those old roads still exist, but have become so overgrown that they look like weathered hiking trails rather than the dirt roads they used to be.

The top of the Forest Road Extension will still experience some closures and road narrowing for the Uptown parking garage still under construction. According to the Sedona Public Works Department, the cost of that project is currently $26 million as of April 2025. Residents who have yet to see it because it was isolated along what was a dead-end road can now watch the progress as it nears completion.