Canyon de Chelly National Monument — canyon
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Canyon de Chelly National Monument

  • 2 min read
  • 36.155° N 109.509° W

Interesting facts

  • "Chelly" is a Spanish rendering of the Navajo name Tséyiʼ, meaning "inside the rock", later anglicised to the pronunciation "de SHAY".
  • It is the only National Park Service unit whose land is owned by a tribe and managed cooperatively with it.
  • During the Spanish attack of 1805 led by Antonio Narbona, 115 Navajo were killed and 33 taken captive.
  • In the winter of 1864, Navajo bands under Barboncito and Manuelito held out on Fortress Rock, a butte at the junction of the canyons, living on stockpiled food.
  • During Kit Carson's 1864 campaign, Captain Albert Pfeiffer's detachment missed the canyon entrance in a snowstorm and marched through Canyon del Muerto instead.
  • Hopi farmers once planted corn fields and peach orchards on the canyon floor; Carson's troops destroyed Navajo orchards and homes in 1863.
  • The Navajo forced out in the 1860s were allowed to return to their homeland in 1868, after four years of exile at Bosque Redondo.
  • The survey photographer Timothy O'Sullivan photographed the White House Ruin in 1873.
  • Spider Rock, rising about 750 feet from the canyon floor, has served as the backdrop for a number of television commercials.
  • Temperatures in the canyon have ranged from a record 105°F in summer to minus 32°F in January 1919.

Why it is worth it

Canyon de Chelly is not one gorge but a branching system of them — Canyon de Chelly itself, Canyon del Muerto and Monument Canyon — cut into the Defiance Plateau of northeastern Arizona by streams running off the Chuska Mountains. The walls are de Chelly sandstone, the petrified remains of a Permian sand sea, and the old dunes are still legible in them as long, slanting lines of cross-bedding. Near the town of Chinle the rims stand only a few dozen metres above the floor; by the upper reaches they rise to about 1,000 feet, sheer and streaked with dark desert varnish, while the floor below stays green with cottonwoods, fields and grazing land.

What sets the place apart from other red-rock canyons is that it has never stopped being lived in. People have farmed here for more than four thousand years. Ancestral Puebloans built their houses into alcoves in the cliffs and left the canyons around the mid-1300s; Hopi farmers came after them, and then the Navajo, for whom the canyon remains home. About forty Navajo families still live and farm inside the monument. The land is held in trust for the Navajo Nation — none of it is federally owned — and the National Park Service, which has managed the monument since 1931, does so in partnership with the tribe.

The most photographed sight is Spider Rock, a twin sandstone spire rising around 800 feet from the junction of Canyon de Chelly and Monument Canyon; Navajo tradition holds that Spider Woman lives on its summit. Look also for the White House Ruin, a two-level cliff dwelling with one part on the valley floor and another tucked into an alcove some fifty feet above, and for Antelope House and Mummy Cave in Canyon del Muerto. The canyon's history has darker pages too: a Spanish expedition under Antonio Narbona attacked the Navajo here in 1805, and Kit Carson's campaign of 1863–64 drove them from the canyon on the forced march to Bosque Redondo.

Getting there

The monument lies just east of Chinle on the Navajo Nation. The nearest larger town is Gallup, New Mexico, about 98 km away as the crow flies and roughly 150 km by road via Highway 264 west and US 191 north; from Chinle, Indian Route 7 leads less than three miles to the visitor centre. The nearest airport is Gallup Municipal Airport (GUP), about 97 km away. South Rim Drive and North Rim Drive (Route 64, also reachable from Tsaile) lead to the overlooks. The canyon floor can only be entered with a park ranger or an authorised Navajo guide — the one exception is the White House Ruin Trail, a 2.5-mile round trip that drops about 600 feet from the South Rim.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Arizona 18The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in the United States 5The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in the United States 8The Most Beautiful Canyons and Gorges in the United States 12The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries in the United States 12The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests in the United States 25The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders in the United States 68The Most Beautiful Canyons and Gorges 70The Most Beautiful Nature Sanctuaries 91The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites 193The Most Beautiful Gardens, Parks and Forests 232The Greatest Archaeological Wonders 306The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders 580

From the encyclopaedia

Canyon de Chelly National Monument was established on April 1, 1931, as a unit of the National Park Service. Located in northeastern Arizona, it is within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation and lies in the Four Corners region. Reflecting one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes of North America, it preserves ruins of the indigenous tribes that lived in the area, from the Ancestral Puebloans to the Navajo who eliminated them. The monument covers 83,840 acres and encompasses the floors and rims of the three major canyons: de Chelly, del Muerto, and Monument. These canyons were cut by streams with headwaters in the Chuska Mountains just to the east of the monument. None of the land is federally owned. Canyon de Chelly is one of the most visited national monuments in the United States.

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36.15530, -109.50900per Wikidata