A Trip to Navajo National Monument

Do you want to get off the beaten track -where there is no one waiting to wipe your windshield, shine your shoes, or cook your breakfast? Where you'll be ten miles from the nearest telephone, thirtyeight miles from the nearest gas pump, and as far from a railroad as you can get within the boundaries of the United States? If you do, the National Park Service invites you to fill your chuck box and your gas tank and let Navajo National Monument fill your eyes with splendor. (If you have no chuck box, there are three or four trading posts within three hours drive which have accommodations for guests.) You'll be off the beaten trails, but you'll be in the heart of the most spectacular scenery you have probably ever seen, and completely surrounded by the colorful Navajo Reservation, which averages two persons to the square mile.

Regardless of how you approach the Monument by car the last fifteen miles is a "two-track road" through sage brush, over sand dunes, and across barren rocks-most of it uphill-from sage-covered Calamity Flat to the piñon and juniper forests of Zilth Nez Mesa.

Betatakin is one of three great ruins in the Navajo National Monument. Nearly 700 years ago a tribe of Indians built a village under this arch. The arch itself is high enough to contain the Washington Capitol building.

Timbers in the roofs of Betatakin show that the Puebloans built and remodeled the village for more than 30 years (1242-1277 A. D.) Below, on the trail to Betatakin. You rough it when you travel in this primitive area but what you see is worth it.

sand, shale, and water for mortar; timbers for vigas; poles for purlins; saplings for savinas; and grass to hold the mud roofs together-carrying all these materials up a steeply slanting rock to the back of the cave. For Betatakin is aptly named by the Navajos "Hillside House;" the large cave had only a few square yards of level floor and building up on the sharp slope meant first constructing a retaining wall behind which dirt could be piled until a level was obtained. An eastern visitor last summer remarked, "Half the fun of seeing Betatakin is telling someone else how impossible it is!"

It is no longer necessary to make the long hard hike into the canyon since the National Park Service has provided Sandal Trail; this trail takes off from the parking area and traverses nine-tenths of a mile on comparatively level terrain, arriving at Betatakin Point. From this Point a full view of Betatakin and its cave may be had; a binocular station is availableWhile parts of the ruins in the Navajo National Monument have fallen in, much of the original architecture is preserved so that the visitor appreciates the scope of the villages.

Inscription House Ruin in the Monument is located at the foot of the great cliff shown here from the air. Below, is Custodian Jim Brewer (left) with Hosteen John Wetherill, who discovered the Monument in 1909. and each individual room may be “brought up” into the lap of the visitor. The question most frequently asked the Park rangers in these archeological National Monuments are: “Where did these people come from?” and “Why did they leave?” The questions archeologists have been scrambling to unearth are: “Where did these people come from, and why did they leave?” (Turn to Page 36)