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Monument Valley

Monument Valley is a Navajo Nation tribal park, straddling the border of northeastern Arizona and southeastern Utah of the Colorado Plateau. It preserves the Navajo way of life and has some of the most striking and recognizable landscapes of sandstone buttes, mesas and spires in the entire Southwest. The area is entirely within the Navajo Indian Reservation near the small Indian town of Goulding which was established in 1923 as a trading post.

Mystery Valley

Mystery Valley is a few miles from the better known Monument Valley sites. A part of the Navajo Reservation, it is considered a region of Monument Valley. Mystery Valley was originally settled by the Anasazi, a Native American culture that mysteriously disappeared. As mentioned, the Navajo now populate these lands and have done so for more than 500 years.  Mystery Valley contains, natural arches, caves, small canyons, and ancient ruins of the Anasazi. Due to the historical, archaeological and “spiritual” value of the places. Mystery Valley may be visited only with a Navajo guide.

Geology of the Region

Before humans, the Park had been a lowland basin. For hundreds of millions of years, materials that eroded from the early Rock Mountains deposited layer upon layer of sediment which cemented a slow and gentle uplift. Generated by ceaseless pressure from below the surface, horizontal strata were elevated, quite uniformly, one to three miles above sea level. What was once a basin became a plateau.

Natural forces of wind and water that eroded the land spent the last 50 million years cutting into and peeling away at the surface of the plateau. The simple wearing down of altering layers of soft and hard rock slowly revealed the natural wonders of Monument Valley today.

The Navajo People

The Navajo are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States with more than 300,00 tribal members. The Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the U.S. and has the largest reservation in the country. Among Navajos, the native Navajo language is alive and is spoken throughout the region. In addition to their native language, most Navajo also speak English.