Monument Valley is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 ft (300 m) above the valley floor. It is located on the Utah–Arizona state line, near the Four Corners area. The valley is a sacred area that lies within the territory of the Navajo Nation Reservation, the Native American people of the area.
Monument Valley has been featured in many forms of media since the 1930s. Director John Ford used the location for a number of his Westerns; critic Keith Phipps wrote that “its five square miles [13 square kilometers] have defined what decades of moviegoers think of when they imagine the American West.”
Geography and geology
Location of Monument Valley in the United States.
The area is part of the Colorado Plateau. The elevation of the valley floor ranges from 5,000 to 6,000 feet (1,500 to 1,800 m) above sea level. The floor is largely siltstone of the Cutler Group, or sand derived from it, 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 the Organ Rock Shale, the middle is de Chelly Sandstone, and the top layer is the Moenkopi Formation capped by Shinarump Conglomerate. The valley includes large stone structures, including the “Eye of the Sun”.
Between 1945 and 1967, the southern extent of the Monument Upwarp was mined for uranium, which occurs in scattered areas of the Shinarump Conglomerate; vanadium and copper are associated with uranium in some deposits.
Major formations include West and East Mitten Buttes, Merrick Butte, and Hunts Mesa.
Tourism
Monument Valley, Apache scout
Monument Valley includes much of the area surrounding Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, a Navajo Nation equivalent to a national park. Oljato, for example, is also within the area designated as Monument Valley.
Visitors may pay an access fee and drive through the park on a 17-mile (27 km) dirt road. Parts of Monument Valley, such as Mystery Valley and Hunts Mesa, are accessible only by guided tour.
In visual media
Monument Valley from the valley floor
Monument Valley has been featured in numerous computer games, in print, and in motion pictures, including multiple Westerns directed by John Ford that influenced audiences’ view of the American West, such as: Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Searchers (1956).
Many more recent movies, with other directors, were also filmed in Monument Valley, including Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (in 1967), the first Spaghetti Western to be filmed outside Europe, and Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger.
In Airwolf: The Movie and the subsequent series, a hollow mesa in Monument Valley was the hiding place for the fictional helicopter. It was referred to as ‘Valley of the Gods’.
Gallery
-
Monument Valley before sunrise
-
West, East Mittens and Merrick Butte after sunset
-
-
Snow-covered Monument Valley sunrise in January
-
Monument Valley West and East Butte at 6 in the morning
-
Sandstorm in Monument Valley
-
Vegetation of Monument Valley
-
Monument Valley landscape
-
View on the Monument Valley from Hunts mesa
-
Mitten Shadow Event, Sept. 13, 2013
.jpg)
Panorama
