Ah, the West.
Mythical home of Road Runner.
John Wayne.
And families in wagons, heading for a fresh start on the rugged frontier.
Wide open sky and these big red rock formations make up its stereotypical backdrop.
The one in movies and cartoons.
“Oh there’s gotta be a phone or a gas station around here somewhere, honey.”
But when you look at a bunch of those movies back to back, you start to notice something.
This “image of the West” kind of looks the same whenever we see it.
And that’s because this specific group of formations is unique to one place: Monument
Valley.
So how did this one area become a symbol of the American West?
Monument Valley is on the Arizona-Utah border, inside the Navajo Nation Reservation.
Its towering red sandstone formations, called buttes rise hundreds of feet above the desert
floor.
For centuries, only Native Americans – specifically the Paiute and Navajo – occupied this
remote landscape, fielding conflicts with the US government.
Non-indigenous people began to visit in the early 20th century, and in the early 1920s
Colorado sheep trader Harry Goulding and his wife Leone set up a trading post on the Utah
side of Monument Valley, which at the time was just outside of the Navajo Reservation.
In the 1930s this area was hit hard by drought; the Great Depression; and a forced reduction
of livestock by the US government, which slashed a vital source of income.
Goulding tried for years to draw attention to Monument Valley’s stunning landscape,
thinking tourism could help boost the local economy.
But according to Goulding, the area’s big break didn’t come until 1938, when he brought
photos of Monument Valley to Hollywood.
Stagecoach, directed by John Ford and shot primarily on location in Monument Valley,
revolutionized the Western.
Elevating the genre from the low budget “pulp” reputation it had developed in the 1930s – what’s
known as a “B” movie...
SON: “What does it say, Dad?”
DAD: “Ah, don’t mean a thing, son.”
...into one of Hollywood’s most popular genres for the next 20 years.
It was also the breakout role for American icon John Wayne.
Who until this point had spent years starring in “B” Westerns like 1933’s Riders of
Destiny.
WAYNE: “Make it fast, Slippery. This is your last draw.”
Stagecoach mainstreamed the Western, and it’s here that audiences began to associate Monument
Valley with the mythic American West.
An epic, isolated landscape full of potential.
The kind of place where outlaws and outcasts could find a fresh start.
Following Ford’s lead, other filmmakers began using Monument Valley as their Western
backdrops.
Including Ford himself, seven more times.
Most notably in The Searchers, often regarded as the ultimate Western.
The movie takes place in Texas.
WAYNE: “What’s that got to do with us?”
But that didn’t matter. By then, Monument Valley was a cliché.
And clichés are useful for storytelling.
They signal to the audience what kind of story this is.
Or set a familiar tone in advertising. Those buttes are so ingrained in pop culture
that they can be used as shorthand for stories of Western adventure.
LEGO: “Wait, where are we?”
Which might be why the Coen Brothers chose it as the backdrop for the opening scene of
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, their 2018 homage and parody of the genre.
SCRUGGS: “A song never fails to ease my mind out here in the West. Where the distances
are great, and the scenery monotonous.”
When the film company that made Stagecoach wrapped production and left Monument Valley
in late 1938, it had paid Navajo locals somewhere around $50,000.
Hundreds had worked as crewmembers and extras, though they played the roles of Apache “bad
guys.”
According to reports at the time, that money was enough to get them through the winter.
And as Monument Valley’s reputation grew, Goulding’s plan to bring to bring in tourism
started working.
The Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park now sees around 350,000 visitors each year.
Tourists can visit the trading post and go on Navajo-led tours of the famous buttes.
And they get there by taking this road, US Highway 163.
You’ve probably seen it before.
It’s where Forrest Gump ended his famous run across America.
GUMP: “My running days was over. So I went home to Alabama.”
Alabama’s in the other direction, but that doesn’t matter.
This backdrop could be anywhere in the West.