Navajo rugs, blankets and weavings
National Monument Valley Navajo Reservation

Parts of Monument and Mystery Valleys are sacred to the Navajo people. I hope that you will respect their beliefs, and leave things as you find them.

The Navajo People (Dine') of Monument Valley are amoungst the most Traditional Dine' on the Reservation. Many practice the Traditional Beliefs, live in Traditional Hogans, make their living by sheep herding, and making Navajo Rugs, and Silversmithing.

The road to Navajo National Monument winds its way up from Highway 160, the artery connecting Tuba City and Kayenta, Arizona. Up and up the car seems to travel, slowly gaining altitude. Often in the winter, the turnoff in the valley will be free of snow. Up the nine miles to the monument, the snow becomes thicker and thicker, testimony to the dependence on the natural environment and the difficulty that characterizes life in this region. These relationships epitomize the modern and prehistoric story of Navajo National Monument.

Located in the heart of the western section of the Navajo reservation, Navajo National Monument comprises three sections, none of which are contiguous. The main section, referred to by the name of the cliff dwelling it was established to protect, Betatakin, includes 160 acres of government land and a 244.59-acre section of land used under the terms of an agreement with the Navajo Nation. The Keet Seel section, about eight miles cross-country from Betatakin, contains one of the most important large Pueblo ruins in the Southwest within its 160-acre boundary. Inscription House, the third section and also named for its primary ruin, is forty miles away in Nitsin Canyon.

The Colorado Plateau, the setting for the monument, has an unusual impact on people. It is haunting, for the region contains some of the most threatening and striking landscape in the U.S. Rugged and beautiful, its stark outlines and muted colors reflect the difficulty of human endeavor in this unforgiving region. Encompassing part of each of the four corners states, the plateau contains a number of smaller physiographic provinces. One of these, the Navajo section, contains the Shonto Plateau, which surrounds the canyon systems that make up Navajo National Monument.

The Colorado Plateau has a unique geologic history that defines the character of the land and consequently the nature of human life upon it. To the modern human eye, the land appears barren, without promise. It offers few of the features that people of the modern world covet. Its rugged nature required the application of massive modern technologies to even partially subdue, and that endeavor remains far from complete. To the untrained, the plateau and its components are a mystery. Yet in its landscape is a record of the natural environments that preceded the present.

During the lower to middle Triassic period about 225 million years ago, the portion of the Colorado Plateau that contains Navajo National Monument was a vast basin into which the drainage from surrounding highlands flowed. Within the next twenty million years, the plateau was transformed from a shallow sea into a great inland desert not unlike the modern Sahara Desert. Deposits of wind-blown sand piled into enormous dunes that covered the region, forming a massive sandstone layer more than 300 feet in depth.

• Navajo history
• Navajo Nation
• Canyon de Chelly
• Chaco Culture

Jurassic period Monument Valley Navajo Reservation - page 3

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