Monument Valley

Where it sits. Monument Valley is not a valley in the river-cut sense at all. It is a broad, sand-floored basin on the Colorado Plateau, straddling the Utah-Arizona state line roughly 40 km north of Kayenta and 35 km south-west of Mexican Hat, where a former plateau has been stripped away and only its hardest fragments still stand. The floor lies at about 1,600 m; the tallest buttes rise some 300 m above it. Every square metre of it is Navajo Nation land. The view most people carry in their heads is the one from the escarpment behind the Tribal Park visitor centre, where West Mitten Butte, East Mitten Butte and Merrick Butte are spaced across the red plain like pieces abandoned mid-game.

What built it. The sheer upper walls are De Chelly Sandstone, a Permian dune field roughly 270 million years old, still showing the cross-bedding of ancient wind. Beneath it the softer Organ Rock Shale erodes faster and forms the sloping skirts of debris at each butte's foot, which is why the formations look like towers set on cones. Caps of Moenkopi mudstone and coarse Shinarump conglomerate survive on the highest mesas and slow their retreat. Iron oxide gives the whole basin its colour, which shifts from orange at midday to a deep brick red in the last hour of light. Totem Pole, a spire barely wider than a lift shaft and around 120 m tall, is what a butte becomes just before it disappears.

On screen. The valley's screen career began with a trading-post owner, not a studio: Harry Goulding took photographs of the buttes to Hollywood in 1938 and came back with John Ford. Ford shot seven features here between 1939 and 1964 and used the same handful of viewpoints so consistently that they became a visual grammar for the entire genre. A caution for location hunters: the famous chase in Stagecoach was not filmed here at all, but staged by stunt coordinator Yakima Canutt on Lucerne Dry Lake near Victorville, California, and the valley itself occupies only a couple of minutes of that film.

• Stagecoach (1939) and My Darling Clementine (1946) - Ford's establishing wide shots across the Mittens and Merrick Butte
• Fort Apache (1948) and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) - cavalry columns crossing the open flats
• The Searchers (1956) - the valley standing in for Texas, including the doorway framing that opens and closes the film
• The Eiger Sanction (1975) - Clint Eastwood's crew on Totem Pole, the last party permitted to climb it
• Forrest Gump (1994) - not inside the park, but on U.S. 163 to the north, looking back at these buttes

Navajo ground rules. This is a tribal park, established in 1958 and run by Navajo Parks and Recreation, not a unit of the National Park Service. A per-person entrance fee is collected at the gate in cash or by card, and America the Beautiful passes and other federal credentials are not valid here. Alcohol is prohibited throughout the Navajo Nation. Drones are not permitted. Unlike the rest of Arizona, the Navajo Nation observes daylight saving time, so between March and November the park runs an hour ahead of Flagstaff and matches Utah and Colorado clocks - a detail that has ruined many sunrise plans.

What you actually see today. The self-drive Valley Drive is a 27 km unpaved loop with about eleven numbered pull-offs, taking two hours at a sensible pace. It is washboarded, steep in its first descent and sandy in places; low-slung rental cars manage it in dry weather but suffer. The loop passes John Ford's Point, the Three Sisters, Camel Butte, the Totem Pole viewpoint and Artist's Point. Beyond that loop, everything - Mystery Valley, Hunts Mesa, Teardrop Arch, the Big Hogan, Ear of the Wind - requires a licensed Navajo guide, usually in an open-backed truck. The Wildcat Trail, a 5 km loop around West Mitten Butte, is the only walk visitors may do unaccompanied. The View Hotel, Navajo-owned and opened in 2008, sits on the rim with every room facing the Mittens.

Getting there and timing. U.S. 163 is the approach from Utah and U.S. 160 plus U.S. 163 from Arizona; the nearest fuel and groceries are at Kayenta. Gates typically open around 8am and close in the late afternoon, with seasonal variation, and the last vehicles are admitted well before closing. Spring and autumn give warm days and cold, clear nights. July and August bring heat above 35C and afternoon monsoon cells that turn the loop road to slick clay within minutes. Winter is quiet, and a dusting of snow on red sandstone is the rarest photograph the place offers.