You may not know it, but chances are you've seen Monument Valley
Dozens of Hollywood Westerns and other movies have been filmed in this stunning valley in Navajo territory in Utah and Arizona
Even if you have never been to Monument Valley, there's a good chance you have seen it in a movie. Over 50 movies and more than a few television shows have been shot on this remote, desolate patch of Navajo land spilling across the Utah-Arizona state line. Its desert landscape and soaring buttes are an iconic image of the cowboy West, so many of those movies are Westerns.
The first movie shot in Monument Valley was a silent picture, The Vanishing American, based on a Zane Grey novel and made in 1925. The filmmakers hired 1,000 local Navajos for the film. It was a considerable, if temporary, boost for the local economy. Film historian Angela Aleiss called the movie "one of Hollywood's few powerful exposés white exploitation of American Indians."
In 1938, the owner of a local trading post named Harvey Goulding heard that the director John Ford was planning to shoot a Western in Arizona. They went to Los Angeles and tried to talk their way into seeing Ford, hoping to show him photos of Monument Valley to persuade him to make his movie there. They got in and Ford was persuaded. Despite the logistical challenges, he would shoot Stagecoach, starring a young John Wayne, in Monument Valley. Over the next three decades, he would shoot six more films there.
Wayne, who appeared in 14 Ford movies, would later say, "When Pappy (his nickname for Ford) found Monument Valley, he found a subject equal to his talent."
Stagecoach was Ford’s first movie filmed in Monument Valley
For research, I recently watched Ford's so-called cavalry trilogy: Fort Apache, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. The first two were shot in Monument Valley. Rio Grande was shot elsewhere in Utah. Wayne stars in all three. In Fort Apache, Native Americans (played again by local Navajos) are depicted sympathetically. They are lied to and victimized by the martinet leader of the local Army troops (brilliantly played by Henry Fonda.) In the latter two, they are mostly rampaging warriors, the familiar image from countless Westerns. When they go into battle they are invariably racing on horseback, always whooping and shrieking. Even when peaceful, they are depicted as sullen, humorless people who rarely speak even to one another. It was disturbing to see these grotesque stereotypes. Yet I had read that the local Navajos who got work as extras in Ford’s movies were grateful for the income and by all accounts, liked him.
"Each movie pumped tens of thousands of dollars into the local economy," wrote Tony Perrottet in Smithsonian Magazine in 2010. "The shoots were usually festive, with hundreds of Navajo gathering in tents near Goulding's trading post, singing, watching stuntmen perform tricks and playing cards late into the night. Ford, often called 'One Eye' because of his patch, was accepted by the Navajo, and he returned the favor: after heavy snows cut off many families in the valley in 1949, he arranged for food and supplies to be parachuted to them."
From Flagstaff, where I spent the night, my GPS told me it would take two hours, forty-five minutes to drive to the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park entrance. It lied. It took me nearly four hours. I did stop in Tuba City, through which the line demarcating Navajo territory and Hopi territory runs, to get water at a supermarket. In a store, everyone - customers and employees - were Native American. Over the loudspeaker system, Surfin' U.S.A. by the Beach Boys blared.
Monument Valley is part of the 27,000 square mile Navajo Nation. A quarter of a million people live there. The Navajo, who call themselves Diné (The People) have a 19th century history that is sadly not unusual for Native Americans. In 1849, their land was annexed from Mexico to the United States after the Mexican-American War.
After conflicts with U.S. soldiers and white settlers, Col. Kit Carson’s troops burned their crops and homes, stole or killed their livestock and rounded up every Navajo he could - 8,000 men, women and children - marched them 300 miles to Fort Sumner in what’s now New Mexico. They were held captive for four years before a treaty was signed that gave them back their own land and they were allowed to return. A few dozen Navajo now reside in Monument Valley.
When I paid the $8 fee at the entrance to the tribal park, the attendant looked at my rental Nissan Sentra and told me it was risky to drive into the valley because it didn't have a high clearance SUV. The 17-mile loop, he said, was a rutted dirt road and if I broke down, it would be my problem getting out, but he added, "but some people do it."
I drove to the parking lot. Spread before me was a vista of Monument Valley that stretched out for miles and miles. It all seemed familiar, like deja-vu. It was what I had just seen in the Ford movies, exactly the same imagery, but the movies - even She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, which was in color - did not do it justice. This was three dimensional and real and now. There in front of me were the majestic buttes of celluloid fame. The floor of the valley was red sand desert but dotted with plants and even small trees.
There were about a dozen other visitors in the plaza next to the building that housed a visitor center and Navajo museum. Everyone was taking photos of the view or selfies with the view as background. I listened closely and caught snatches of European languages.
I decided to take the chance of driving down into the valley. The road turned out to be worse than just dirt. Parts of it were covered in red sand with rocks of varying sizes. I crept along in low gear as open-air tour vans whizzed by me. My car's outside temperature gauge said it was 95 degrees.
I came to an area to pull over and stopped there. A man sat under a shade attached to his truck from which music - in Spanish - played. He was selling Navajo jewelry. I nodded to him as I walked past. He did not respond. The visitor map I had gotten at the entrance told me the two closest buttes were West Mitten and East Mitten, which is loosely what they resembled. Square blocks of red rock, flat on top, plunging straight down to the desert floor.
Geologists say the valley was once a vast area of sediment from ancient rivers that eventually solidified into rock. Over eons, wind and elements eroded the rock and sculpted the buttes I was now looking at. I tried to imagine how long that would have required. It was humbling to contemplate.
John Ford’s Point, photo credit: Luca Galuzzi
I spent nearly two hours in Monument Valley, winding my way along the loop trail until it ascended toward a promontory that is now called John Ford’s point. The road became increasingly sandy and rutted. I decided it was too risky to proceed. I pulled over, got out and gazed at the three rock formations that looked like poles. My map said they were called The Three Sisters. I recognized them. Then, I looked again at the flat platform of Ford’s point. There was a horse and rider standing there facing the Sisters. I stared, trying to see who it could be. A tour guide? A visitor on horseback? I strained to see. Maybe, just maybe, it was one of the handful of Navajo who still live in the valley. It was impossible to know.
We’ve got our own Three Sisters in Deschutes National Forest. Popular name, I enjoyed reading this!