Author Description

Theme: Monument Valley’s peerless panorama adorned with immense sculptured features mimics an expansive open-air Western movie setting. With this high desert’s picturesque topography, this 379-page (7 x 10 format) anthology describes every facet of the Navajo Reservation’s most celebrated tribal park. Thus, a self-guided tour explaining the geology, human & natural history, and the author’s overnight hiking excursions, among other engaging topics. Abstract: Just north of Kayenta, Arizona (about 22 miles) is one of the most scenic erosional landscapes in the American Southwest. Given this dished valley’s expansive backdrop (1,100 square miles), Monument Valley’s prized showcase of downsizing mesas, buttes, and totems decorating its Great Basin Desert environs, when it comes to peerless Out West scenery, folks, THIS IS IT! It’s also the heart of Indian Country. Some of the landmarks rise1,000 feet from the sandstone base, most of which are lionized decorative features seen in numerous Western movies filmed here since the late 1930s Indeed, one of the Valley’s many vistas overlooks the 17-mile unpaved road is named John Ford’s Point, who was the most famous movie directors lured here by Harry Goulding (viz., the owner of Harry Goulding's historical Trading Post) to do just that. Ford’s most famous cowboy actor, John Wayne, essentially got his first big movie role filmed here (“Stagecoach”). Other than the impressive backdrop scenery, Monument Valley typifies an engaging geologic open textbook, mainly sedimentary rock formations. Additionally, numerous other igneous rocks decorate this wide, far sector, which is referred to as volcanic plugs, each marking so-called dike intrusions. The most famous is the volcanic diatreme, Agathla Peak, rising some 1,500 feet (457 m) from a somewhat barren desert buckled floor. This high-elevation sector (7,000 feet above sea level) of northern Arizona and southeastern Utah is also part of the sprawling Navajo Nation Reservation. Wh