MONUMENT VALLEY
Arizona
Duke and John Ford made 6 movies there
Stagecoach.1939. John Ford
Angel and the Badman.1947.John Wayne
Fort Apache.1948.John Ford
3 Godfathers.1948.John Ford
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon.1949.John Ford
The Searchers .1956.John Ford
and of course John Ford used the locations in other Movies too.
Monument Valley is used in many films, including
Back to the Future III.The Eiger Sanction, Once Upon a Time In the West, Forest Gump
Here's a link to the media about MV,
including more recent films made there, some in the 1990's/2000
List Of Appearances Of Monument Valley In The Media
Monument Valley, an area of striking, flat-topped mesas and buttes,
was a tough location in 1938, at the end of a 200-mile dirt road from
Flagstaff, Arizona.
The Navajo nation, already troubled by disease and unemployment,
were employed to play Apaches – one of the many nations they
were to play over the years. The Valley is not a National Park,
as you might expect, but a Tribal Park still belonging to,
and managed by, the Navajo.
Stagecoach- Location Photos
The film established Monument Valley, on the Arizona-Utah border,
as an icon of the American Old West, although, of the passengers,
only John Wayne actually trekked out to Utah.
None of the principals made it past California’s San Fernando Valley.
Monument Valley
is located on the southern border of Utah with northern Arizona (around 36°59′N 110°6′W). The valley lies within the range of the Navajo Nation Reservation near the town of Goulding and is accessible from U.S. Highway 163. The Navajo name for the valley is Tsé Bii' Ndzisgaii (Valley of the Rocks).
Geology
The area is part of the Colorado Plateau. The floor is largely Cutler Red siltstone or its sand 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 Organ Rock shale, the middle de Chelly sandstone and the top layer is Moenkopi shale capped by Shinarump siltstone.
Between 1948 and 1967, the southern extent of the Monument Upwarp was mined for uranium, which occurs in scattered areas of the Shinarump siltstone; vanadium and copper are associated with uranium in some of these deposits.
Monument Valley provides perhaps the most enduring and definitive images of the American West. The isolated red mesas and buttes surrounded by empty, sandy desert have been filmed and photographed countless times over the years for movies, advertisements and travel brochures. Because of this, the area may seem quite familiar, even on a first visit, but it is soon evident that the natural colors really are as bright and deep as those in all the pictures. The valley is not a valley in the conventional sense, but rather a wide flat, sometimes desolate landscape, interrupted by the crumbling formations rising hundreds of feet into the air, the last remnants of the sandstone layers that once covered the entire region.
Goulding
The area is entirely within the Navajo Indian Reservation on the Utah/Arizona border; the state line passes through the most famous landmarks, which are concentrated around the border near the small Indian town of Goulding - this was established in 1923 as a trading post, and now has a comprehensive range of visitor services. A paved side road heads past the village to the northwest beneath Oljeto Mesa and has views of other less-visited parts of the valley, then another route (Piute Farms Road) continues all the way to the shores of the San Juan branch of Lake Powell.
Approach
There is only one main road through the valley, US 163, which links Kayenta, Arizona with US 191 in Utah. The stretch approaching the AZ/UT border from the north is the most famous image of the valley, and possibly of the whole Southwest - a long, straight, empty road leads across flat desert towards the 1,000 foot high stark red cliffs on the horizon, curving away just in front. The highway cuts through the mesas at Monument Pass, near which several dirt tracks leave both east and west and criss-cross the red, sandy landscape, offering a more close up appreciation of the rock formations.
The Navajo Tribal Park
Although much can be appreciated from the main road, a lot more of the landscape is hidden from view behind long straight cliffs (the Mitchell and Wetherill Mesas), east of the road on the Arizona side. This is contained within the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, reached along a short side road opposite the turn-off to Goulding.
Valley Drive
The view from the visitor center is spectacular enough, but most of the park can only be seen from the Valley Drive, a 17-mile dirt road which starts at the center and goes southeast amongst the towering cliffs and mesas, which includes the "Totem Pole", an oft-photographed spire of rock 300 feet high but only a few metres wide. As of October 2006, the road was well graded and easily navigable by car. Other options for touring the valley are the many Navajo guides and 4WD jeep rental outfits, which wait expectantly by the visitor center - typical prices are around $15 for a 3-hour trip. As well as eroded rocks, this area also has many ancient cave and cliff dwellings, natural arches and petroglyphs.
Iconic Imagery
The twin buttes of the Valley ("the Mittens"), the "Totem Pole" (although the Navajo did not actually build totem poles), and the Ear of the Wind arch, among other features, have developed iconic status. They have appeared in many television programs, commercials, and Hollywood movies, especially Westerns
For more photographs and information:-
Monument Valley- Wikipedia
Monument Valley- Google Images
Previous discussion:-
Monument Valley