Less well known, however, is the story of the man history designates as the first white inhabitant of this region, John James (J.J.) Thompson.

This yarn unravels across the span of the Atlantic Ocean, over the long miles of the North American continent, and intersects with the forced relocation of Native American Indians before finally settling down beside the banks of the Oak Creek.
 
Some scholars claim J. J. Thompson was born in Scotland in 1844.  Others report that he was born in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland in 1842 and ran away at the age of eleven because he was bored with school and church.  Still others spin an even more intriguing tale that he was born and raised during the devastating Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849).
 
From Londonderry to Liverpool to New York City, J.J. was destined to find one benefactor after another who provided not only the financial means, but also the moral support he needed to begin a new life in a new country.
 
The fates ultimately conspired to land J.J. in Texas where he was adopted and raised in the town of Refugio by the Finley family.  Enlisting in the Confederate Army at the age of 19, J.J. spent part of the war in a Union prison camp in Illinois, ending his service in a Georgia hospital recovering from a musket ball wound to the arm and shoulder.
 
At age 26 J.J. left Refugio to take a job as a trail boss on a cattle drive to California. The drive got as far as Utah where the cattle were sold to local Mormons. With his earnings in his pocket. J.J. struck out for the Colorado River Gold Fields where he eventually established a ferry business.  It was at this time that J.J. met and befriended the Abraham James family,
whose daughter, Margrett, would later become J.J.'s wife.
 
A sale of his ferry business enabled J.J. to begin a trading enterprise which eventually lead him to Prescott, responding to the large demand there for salt. After an unsuccessful venture in Phoenix, J.J. returned to Prescott, sold his oxen and wagons and used the proceeds to fund his plans to settle in a place he found on a hunting trip: Oak Creek Canyon.
 
At this time in the mid 1870's the local Indian tribes, consisting mainly of Yavapai and Apache, were subject to a forced removal from the Rio Verde Reservation, the current location of Camp Verde, to the San Carlos Reservation spanning Gila, Graham, and Pinal Counties in southeastern Arizona. The relocation was spurred on by a group of Tucson contractors who were alarmed by the ever increasing self sufficiency of the tribes.  The  relocation march took place in the dead of winter across 181 miles of harsh, unforgiving wilderness. Over one hundred Native Americans lost their lives.
 
History often records J.J. Thompson's find of a well tended plot of squash, beans and corn in Oak Creek Canyon as "a garden abandoned by the Indians," now known as the Indian Gardens north of Midgley Bridge along 89-A.  In this case, however, "abandonment" was actually forced relocation.
 
After erecting a log cabin, J.J. wrote to the Abraham James family, then living in Nevada, and encouraged them to move to the area. The family arrived in 1878 and by the year 1880, thirty-eight year old John James Thompson married sixteen year old Margrett Parlee James.  The couple went on to produce a healthy family including seven boys and two girls.
 
J.J. worked hard to provide for this prodigious brood, selling goods via mule pack to the U.S. Army stationed in Camp Verde, and later hauling freight to Jerome after the copper mines opened, and then to Flagstaff where the Santa Fe Railroad was being laid.
 
The Thompsons were responsible for the building of the first roads in the area. The road from Wilson Canyon to Indian Gardens was completed in 1905.  The Wagon Road begun by the Thompsons which ran through Oak Creek to Indian Gardens was completed by others in 1914. In his mid-60's J.J. took on the Schnebly Hill Road project, begun in 1901 and completed in 1902.
 
Due to the reproductive zeal of J.J. and Margrett as well as the nearby Purtyman family, the first log cabin school house was established in 1899 on a flat above the Creek in an area now known as Lower Manzanita. The spot was selected as the half way point between the Thompson's ranch at Indian Gardens and the Purtyman's spread near Junipine.
 
J.J. Thompson lived out the rest of his life on the Indian Gardens homestead at Oak Creek, dying in 1917 at the age of seventy-five. His wife, Margrett, lived on until 1936 when she died at the age of seventy-two.
 
It is an important aspect of the Sedona story to acknowledge the fact that their lives and that of their progeny was strengthened and sustained by that "abandoned" plot known as Indian Gardens. Local history is silent as to the fate of the people whose initial hard work and loving care first brought that Oak Creek garden to bear.