People usher in the new year with horns, champagne and noisemakers. All well and good, but if you really want to do it right, there’s nothing like lowering a 70-pound, 6-foot-tall, well-lit metallic pinecone.

You might think such a New Year’s Eve breakthrough is recent, given advances in festive technology. But Flagstaff’s annual Pine Cone Drop goes back to 1999, a sand-weighted plastic trash can and lots of hot glue.

The huge pinecone that draws thousands to downtown Flagstaff each New Year’s Eve was merely a random thought launched at a meeting of Weatherford Hotel management seven years ago.

azcentral.com