Monument Valley is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 ft (300 m) above the valley floor. It is located on the Arizona-Utah state line (around 36°59′N 110°6′W), near the Four Corners area. The valley lies within the range of the Navajo Nation Reservation, and is accessible from U.S. Highway 163.
Monument Valley lies within a Navajo Indian Reservation on the Utah and Arizona border. The iconic vision of this area is the sculptural forms of the sandstone buttes and mesas emerging from the desolate desert floor. In reality, the scene is even more breathtaking. Evoking scenes from a Wild West movie, some of these incredible forms rise up to three hundred feet in the air. They are all that remains of the layers of sandstone which once covered the entire area. You will enter the valley on the long, straight, endless road featured in thousands of photographs, and the scene before you will simply take your breath away. But the real secrets lie off the main road in places like Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, which you can visit when hiking. USA Native American culture is greatly preserved and respected in Monument Valley, and you can observe their fascinating culture first-hand.
The area is part of the Colorado Plateau. The elevation of the valley floor ranges from 5,000 to 6,000 feet above sea level. The floor is largely siltstone of the Cutler Group, or sand derived from it, 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 the Organ Rock Shale, the middle is de Chelly Sandstone, and the top layer is the Moenkopi Formation capped by Shinarump Conglomerate. The valley includes large stone structures including the famed Eye of the Sun.
Natural forces of wind and water that eroded the land spent the last 50 million years cutting in to and peeling away at the surface of the plateau.
Between 1948 and 1967, the southern extent of the Monument Upwarp was mined for uranium, which occurs in scattered areas of the Shinarump Conglomerate; vanadium and copper are associated with uranium in some deposits .
The simple wearing down of altering layers of soft and hard rock slowly revealed the natural wonders of Monument Valley today.
See also : Mountains photos collection