A spectacular chocolate-brown waterfall on the Navajo Nation has become a social media star. Grand Falls, just east of Flagstaff, has been inundated with tourists and influencers as Arizona’s rivers and streams surge with rain and spring snowmelt. Grand Falls’ cascade of muddy water makes for great photo ops and selfies. But local Diné residents say it’s not meant to be a tourist destination. It’s a sacred site. And that’s why a community coalition closed it to visitors this spring. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports on an effort to bring healing to a place that has been overused and under-respected by visitors.
Sandra Curtis remembers the day a stranger showed up at her aunt’s house with a broken arm and ankle. He had wrecked his motorcycle on the way to Grand Falls. Curtis drove him to the hospital in Flagstaff, forty miles away, and then delivered the smashed motorcycle to the stranger’s father. "There he wanted to pay us money for our troubles," she says. "I said, we don’t want your money. We just want peace and quiet and you guys aren’t welcome to our residence."
Grand Falls, known to Navajos as Adah'iilíní, is located on Navajo rangeland. It’s registered as a “traditional cultural property” by the Navajo Nation Heritage and Historical Preservation Department for its spiritual importance. But it’s not a national, state, tribal, city or county park. So residents and local livestock grazers are forced to clean up beer bottles and help visitors in trouble.
Curtis says she’s done.
"We’re not there to service these people like that. We don’t want to, and we don’t need to. And that needs to stop."
Coconino County Parks and Recreation and the Leupp Chapter House built a ramada and restrooms at Grand Falls in 2016. According to Parks and Recreation, the Leupp Chapter House has maintained the facilities since then. But locals say it really falls to them to handle surging tourist numbers. Visitors drive ATVs on the rangeland or allow their dogs to chase cattle.
Wanda Nez lives in the area. "If it was tourists who cared about the local people, if it was tourists who did say, “this is a privilege to view Grand Falls, and we come and visit respectfully,” I think a lot of this wouldn’t have happened. But that’s not the mindset of the visitors," she says.
Nez says numerous complaints to Navajo Nation officials and local law enforcement went unheeded. The final straw came in February, when residents noticed an advertisement for Grand Falls tours, "and the local residents were never informed," Nez says. "Not only were they never informed, but the organization that organized this was going to profit from this. That’s when we realized it was getting out of hand."
So, residents formed a group called the Grand Falls Coalition and announced the closure.
The Museum of Northern Arizona is one organization that typically runs an annual tour of Grand Falls. Public affairs director Kristan Hutchinson says they canceled the March event after they heard the residents’ concerns. "The land exists there not necessarily to be at the whim of our Instagram-hungry society, but for many other purposes. The river needs to flow and there’s ecosystems around there and there’s history and culture, and we should all respect that," she says.
Members of the Grand Falls Coalition now patrol the area and pass out flyers to turn cars away. Among them is Violet White, who’s frustrated that tourists have a bathroom to use while just a mile away: "A lot of the residents out here are still—with no electricity, no running water. Our grandmas still have to go out to the outhouse…. It’s just not fair to the Grand Fall residents."
White says it’s the right of the tribal members who live there to close Grand Falls to visitors and let the land heal. She doesn’t want development or any kind of money transaction there.
"It’s a sacred place," White says. "A lot of our ceremonies are taken place down in the falls, at the falls. People do offering, and then there’s even burial sites right across the falls. It’s a holy place, that’s what our grandmothers tell us."
The Grand Falls Coalition intends to pass a resolution through the Leupp Chapter House to make the closure permanent.
