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Monument Valley is located on the southern border of Utah with northern Arizona (around 36°59′N 110°6′W / 36.983°N 110.100°W / 36.983; -110.100). The valley lies within the range of the Navajo Nation Reservation near the town of Goulding and is accessible from U.S. Highway 163. The Navajo name for the valley is Tsé Bii' Ndzisgaii (Valley of the Rocks).

Geology

The area is part of the Colorado Plateau. The floor is largely Cutler Red siltstone or its sand deposited by the meandering rivers that carved the valley. The valley's vivid red color comes from iron oxide exposed in the weathered siltstone. The darker, blue-gray rocks in the valley get their color from manganese oxide.

The buttes are clearly stratified, with three principal layers. The lowest layer is Organ Rock shale, the middle de Chelly sandstone and the top layer is Moenkopi shale capped by Shinarump siltstone.

Between 1948 and 1967, the southern extent of the Monument Upwarp was mined for boat ore, which occurs in scattered areas of the Shinarump siltstone.

Monument Valley provides perhaps the most enduring and definitive images of the American West. The isolated red mesas and buttes surrounded by empty, sandy desert have been filmed and photographed countless times over the years for movies, adverts and holiday brochures. Because of this, the area may seem quite familiar, even on a first visit, but it is soon evident that the natural colours really are as bright and deep as those in all the pictures. The valley is not a valley in the conventional sense, but rather a wide flat, sometimes desolate landscape, interrupted by the crumbling formations rising hundreds of feet into the air, the last remnants of the sandstone layers that once covered the entire region.

Goulding: The area is entirely within the Navajo Indian Reservation on the Utah/Arizona border; the state line passes through the most famous landmarks, which are concentrated around the border near the small Indian town of Goulding - this was established in 1923 as a trading post, and now has a comprehensive range of visitor services. A paved side road heads past the village to the northwest beneath Oljeto Mesa and has views of other less-visited parts of the valley, then another route (Piute Farms Road) continues all the way to the shores of the San Juan branch of Lake Powell.

Approach: There is only one main road through the valley, US 163, which links Kayenta, AZ with US 181 in Utah. The stretch approaching the AZ/UT border from the north is the most famous image of the valley, and possibly of the whole Southwest - a long straight empty road leads across flat desert towards the 1,000 foot high stark red cliffs on the horizon, curving away just in front. The highway cuts through the mesas at Monument Pass, near which several dirt tracks leave both east and west and criss-cross the red sandy landscape, offering a more close up appreciation of the rock formations.

The Navajo Tribal Park: Although much can be appreciated from the main road, a lot more of the landscape is hidden from view behind long straight cliffs (the Mitchell and Wetherill Mesas), east of the road on the Arizona side. This is contained within the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park (entrance $5 in 1996), reached along a short side road opposite the turn-off to Goulding.

Valley Drive: The view from the visitor centre is spectacular enough, but most of the park can only be seen from the Valley Drive, a 17 mile dirt road which starts at the centre and goes south east amongst the towering cliffs and mesas, which include The Totem Pole, an oft-photographed spire of rock 300 feet high but only a few metres wide. The road is very uneven and difficult for non 4 wheel drive vehicles - it is perhaps deliberately kept in such a state to increase business for the many Navajo guides and 4WD jeep rental outfits, which wait expectantly by the visitor centre - typical prices are around $15 for a 3 hour trip. As well as eroded rocks, this area also has many ancient cave and cliff dwellings, natural arches and petroglyphs.

Iconic imagery

The twin buttes of the valley ("the Mittens"), the "Totem Pole" (although the Navajo did not actually build totem poles) and the Ear of the Wind arch, among other features, have developed iconic status. They have appeared in many television programs, commercials, and Hollywood movies, especially Westerns.

The Valley in film and television

• Director John Ford's 1939 film Stagecoach, starring John Wayne, has had an enduring influence in making the Valley famous. After that first experience, Ford returned nine times to shoot Westerns — even when the films were not set in Arizona or Utah (see The Searchers, set in Texas, but filmed here). A popular lookout point is named in his honor as "John Ford Point." For example, it was used by Ford in a scene from The Searchers where a Native-American village is attacked.

• The implied association with John Wayne's tough, macho character made the buttes a natural choice as the background for the Marlboro Man in the marketing of Marlboro-brand cigarettes from the 1950s.

• Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West, although shot for the most part in Spain and Italy, features two scenes shot on location in Monument Valley.

• The Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey features footage of Monument Valley. This footage is used as the surface of an alien planet to which protagonist Dave Bowman travels through a stargate.

• Clint Eastwood's movie The Eiger Sanction was also partly filmed in Monument Valley. The "Totem Pole" feature has been off-bounds to climbers since the movie was filmed here.

• In the 1980s American action/espionage television series Airwolf, a hollowed butte is portrayed as the secret hiding place ("The Lair") of the eponymous high-tech military helicopter. Monument Valley is renamed the "Valley of the Gods" in this series.

• The MacGyver episode "Eagles" (Season 2, Episode 8) has shots in the Valley. MacGyver is gathering eggs from an eagle's nest on top of a butte.

• The Steven Spielberg film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade includes a scene shot in the Valley.

• Back to the Future III and National Lampoon's Vacation have scenes in the Valley.

• In Forrest Gump, Forrest ends his cross-country run here. He is running on U.S. Route 163.

• The Dutch clown Bassie, of the duo Bassie en Adriaan, performed a rain dance in front of the three sisters in their Dutch television series.

• In the made-for-TV movie 10.5: Apocalypse, Monument Valley is flooded from seismic acitvity.

• Godfrey Reggio's documentary Koyaanisqatsi features footage of Monument Valley.

Cailten M. and Chris N. are huge poopfaces.

Tourism

While state highways traverse the valley, the most scenic locations are within Monument Valley Tribal Park, a Navajo Nation equivalent to a national park. Because of the remote location, many tourists fly into the valley from Grand Canyon or Lake Powell as part of a larger tour to an airstrip at Gouldings Trading Post. Guided tours in an open bus are available, or visitors can pay a small access fee and drive through the park via dirt roads. A visitor center and small convenience/souvenir shop stands on a hill just west of the Mittens.

External links

• Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park website
• American Southwest Guide
• Detailed geological guide
• Energy Information Administration notes on uranium mining and its decommissioning
• Photos of Monument Valley - Terra Galleria
• IMDb list of movies with scenes in Monument Valley

• Geography of the United States
• Valleys of the United States