I used to think that the buttes that dominated the background for all of John Ford’s movies were all over the west. Well, no. Ford shot a many, maybe most, of his movies in Monument Valley. For example, one of my favorites, the Searchers, which is about Texas cattlemen, features Monument Valley as a background. It wasn’t just Ford. Monument Valley became the iconic image of the American West. Three days hardly did it justice, but the weather and the sun were very cooperative.
Most of the Valley is in the Navajo Reservation. They’ve done a nice job of making it accessible to the public while keeping the jobs and revenue for themselves.
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