Monument Valley

People have lived around Monument Valley for thousands of years. Ancestral Puebloans lived in the region, leaving cliff dwellings such as those at Navajo National Monument to the south-west, and the valley later became Navajo land; in Navajo it is called Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii, the "valley of the rocks". The region remained remote after the United States took it from Mexico. In 1864 most of the Navajo were forced on the Long Walk to imprisonment at Bosque Redondo, and the treaty of 1868 established the reservation to which they returned. Prospectors searching for silver came in the late 19th century; Merrick Butte is named after one of them, the silver miner Jack Merrick, who was killed in the area in 1880.

Trading posts became the meeting point of Navajo and outside life. Harry Goulding bought land here in 1921, and in 1928 he built a trading post on the Utah side that was also his family's home. During the Great Depression, when the director John Ford was looking for a location for Stagecoach, Goulding sent him photographs of the valley, and Ford filmed it here; it was released in 1939. Ford returned for westerns such as My Darling Clementine, Fort Apache and The Searchers, and the buttes became the image of the American West.

From the 1940s uranium was mined in and around the valley, providing work but leaving a legacy of illness and contamination that the Navajo Nation still deals with. The Navajo Nation later established Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, its equivalent of a national park. Tourism grew steadily, and the valley has come to define how many people imagine the American West.

Monument Valley is part of the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the United States, and Diné language, clan relationships and traditions shape daily life. Many families still keep sheep and goats, weave rugs on upright looms and live in homes alongside a hogan, the traditional Navajo dwelling, which is also used for ceremonies. The buttes and mesas carry names and meanings in Navajo tradition, and certain places are sacred.

Navajo guides lead visitors into the restricted areas of the park, telling stories about the formations, showing rock art and, sometimes, demonstrating weaving or singing. Jewellery, pottery, sand paintings and woven goods are sold at stalls throughout the valley, often directly by their makers. The valley's role in film is part of local identity too: after John Ford's westerns, many later films and advertisements were made here.

Visitors are guests on Navajo land. Courtesy means keeping to permitted areas, asking before taking photographs of people, speaking quietly near homes, and accepting that some places and ceremonies are not open to outsiders.

The population around the valley is small, mostly Navajo families spread across homesteads, small clusters of houses and the settlements at Oljato and around Goulding's. Distances are long: many people drive to Kayenta or further for groceries, health care and work, and roads are unpaved in many places.

Jobs are scarce. Tourism — guiding, crafts, food stands, lodging and park work — is the most important employer, along with schools, the clinic and the tribal government. Many young people leave for work in cities and return for family and ceremonies. Some homes across the Navajo Nation still lack mains electricity.

The day follows the land and the weather: livestock to tend, wood and water to fetch, and, for those in tourism, early starts for sunrise tours and long days in the heat. Winters are quiet, and summers bring tour buses and visitors from around the world. Health care access, water, the legacy of uranium mining and keeping the Navajo language alive among the young are recurring concerns.

Navajo food is the local cuisine. Frybread — dough fried until puffy and golden — is eaten plain, with honey or powdered sugar, or as a Navajo taco, topped with beans, ground beef, lettuce, cheese, tomato and chile. Mutton, often boiled or made into stew, is a staple, eaten with frybread or tortillas. Frybread itself has become a symbol of perseverance for the Navajo and other Native peoples, because of its history.

Corn has deep roots in Navajo cooking and, with mutton, was long one of the principal foods, prepared in many ways for family meals and gatherings. Navajo tea, made from a wild plant called greenthread, is a traditional drink.

Restaurants are few, and most visitors eat at the lodges near the park, at stands along the valley loop or in Kayenta, which has the widest choice. Supermarkets in Kayenta are the place to stock up on food and water before heading into the valley.