Pluto discovery place

[garyclaytonpalmer]

I live in Flagstaff AZ. Pluto was discovered from a place near town called Mars Hill.
My question is back in the early 1900's how and why did Lowell decide that Flagstaff was a good place to study Mars and manage to find the ninth planet. Back then most of America was fairly dark without the so called light pollution as we have today.
Is there any other signifigance to this area for Lowell?
His first observatories were built by grain silo builders, where as round buildings were not the nrom otherwise.

[bystander]

In 1894, Massachusetts astronomer Percival Lowell hired A. E. Douglass to scout an ideal site for a new observatory. Douglass, impressed by Flagstaff's elevation, named it as an ideal location for the now famous Lowell Observatory, saying: "other things being equal, the higher we can get the better". Two years later, the specially-designed 24-inch (610 mm) Clark telescope that Lowell had ordered was installed. In 1930, Pluto was discovered using one of the observatory’s telescopes.

[garyclaytonpalmer]

But I wonder what was so special about Flagstaff? There are plenty of places in the US that are as high if not higher in elevation than Flagstaff.
Lowell must have spent a lot of time studing the "Canals" on Mars and marveling at Martian tech, as it took 35 years to find Pluto after his telescopes were built.
He is buried up there too. Is tomb is there looking much like a telescope building as the others.

[bystander]

The fact that it was on the major east-west trade route and that the first permanent settlement (1876) was supposedly by a group of Boston (Lowell's home) settlers at Mars Hill probably both contributed to the selection.

[Chris Peterson]

But I wonder what was so special about Flagstaff? There are plenty of places in the US that are as high if not higher in elevation than Flagstaff.

I believe that locations for the observatory were actively scouted based on both transparency and seeing- the first time this was ever done. There aren't actually that many places in the US that are high, have excellent seeing, are far from city lights, and are readily accessible. Flagstaff is one of them.