Land Lines

At Navajo National Monument up in northeast Arizona, soaring rock alcoves provided shelter for Pueblo people in the thirteenth century. Many alcoves also hold springs, lush with plants. Today on Land Lines, we visit a well-known site, Betatakin--set like a jewel in one of those alcoves. 

"The name for this place is Talastima, place of flowers, or corn tasseling.  This is where we came from," says Lloyd Masayumptewa, a Hopi and a park archeologist.

Montezuma Well is easy to find down in the Verde Valley–it’s located right at the intersection of geology and biology.  The blue-green pool–120 yards wide, cupped in a perfectly round sinkhole–is startling in the middle of a mesquite desert.

Here’s some of that grey rock, it’s coming down the channel – your first clue. It’s all about discovery …..

Twenty-five years ago, I parked near Black Mesa, up in northeast Arizona.  On no particular schedule and with no real destination, I just started walking--because I knew I would discover something.  I wandered up an unnamed canyon with walls of sheer Navajo Sandstone.

Don't try the Kelly Grade in a rainstorm. When this steep stretch of the Smoky Mountain Road is wet, its mud surface is impossibly slick. Stay in granny gear, keep a tight grip on the wheel, and hope that nobody else is coming the other way. There's no guardrail and that cliff next to your tires drops hundreds of feet straight down.  The shale gives way to sandstone when the road straightens out on top of the Kaiparowits Plateau.

Every month this fall, KNAU has been taking you to places on the Colorado Plateau. They may be places you know, they may be places you've only heard of. It's a series we call Land Lines and today we're visiting Monument Valley. People come from all over the world to see this valley, one of the most evocative landscapes in the southwest. But at least one rock feature doesn't quite fit the mold of the mesas and buttes. In today's Land Lines, Rose Houk and Michael Collier explore the origins of El Capitan.