Monument Valley

By Laurie

Note: This post is one of a series about my 2015 Western Parks vacation with my daughter and grandson.  For our itinerary with links to other posts and an overview of this trip, please see 2015 Western Parks Vacation.

Monument Valley has been featured in many western films since the 1930s. Director John Ford used the location for a number of his best-known films (including Stagecoach and Rio Grande) and in the words of critic Keith Phipps, “its five square miles have defined what decades of moviegoers think of when they imagine the American West.” The valley has also been featured in more modern films including Forrest Gump, National Lampoons Vacation, Mission: Impossible II, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the HBO series Westworld.

Monument Valley is part of the Colorado Plateau and is most identifiable by it’s sandstone buttes, some reaching 1,000 ft above the valley floor. It is actually a wide flat region interrupted by the sandstone rock formations, the last remnants of the sandstone layers that once covered the entire area. It is located on the Arizona–Utah border near the Four Corners area and is within the territory of the Navajo Nation Reservation.

Since we would be passing Monument Valley as we drove from Page, AZ to Mesa Verde in Colorado, we drove into the valley as far as the Monument Valley Visitor Center. The visitor center was very interesting and informative, including a display about the Navajo code talkers in WWII. We didn’t take any of the tours, which we felt were too expensive and time consuming. What we saw and photographed along the 3+ mile entrance road and at the visitor center was sufficient for us.

Additional Information

Navajo Nation: Monument Valley Park

Wikipedia: Monument Valley

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