Monument Valley

We head for Monument Valley, the iconic cowboy film location. How this came about is an interesting story that we’ll look at later in this blog.

It’s barely 100 miles from Moab to Monument Valley, and good roads. We pass through the town of Mexican Hat and see how it got its name from the balanced rock at the edge of town that looks like a sombrero.

We think we see our destination in the distance. A long, straight road leading to misty, jagged pinnacles. 

The campsite is in the village of Monument Valley and we are allocated a pleasant pitch. Here’s Jane sat nodding in the sunshine like a cowboy who’s ridden 50 miles. To be fair, she’d had worse- me driving for 50 miles.

The campsite is called Goulding’s Camp Park; the store in the village is Goulding’s Supermarket; the hotel is Goulding’s; the garage is Goulding’s. Everything is Goulding’s. There is a reason.

Harry Goulding and his wife bought a large area of land in Mounument Valley in the early 1920’s as a business opportunity. They had the idea of running a trading post, bartering food with the Navajo Indians in exchange for their hand crafted items like blankets and jewellery. These they sold on.

The Gouldings lived in tents for a few years then built a permanent premises with comfortable living quarters above. This still stands and is now a free museum. Pictures below show the Trading Post first, then their lounge.

The Trading Post was a success, both for the Gouldings and the Navajos. But the great depression of the 1930’s caused the demand for Navajo products to plummet. The Gouldings then had a desperate idea to bring back prosperity to the Valley. They decided to travel to Hollywood to persuade the film makers to use the Valley as a location.

By perseverence, they got to see top director John Ford and showed him their photos of the Valley. He was suitably impressed, and agreed to use it as the setting for his latest cowboy film, Stagecoach, starring a new actor called John Wayne.

The film was duly shot against a background recognisable today, as shown by the following Stagecoach film clips and my photos of the same scenes.

Stagecoach was a hit and launched John Wayne on his carreer of over 140 films. The Gouldings did the catering and accomodation for the film crew and actors. It was a financial success for the Gouldings and for the Navajo. They were hired as extras on top money for those days: $5 per day or $8 if they brought their own horses.

The film company also hired the Medicine Man so that it all ran smoothly with the Navajo extras.. For this he was paid $15 a day and, as John Ford said, worth every cent. Here he is.

As part of the museum, the filmset cabin from Stagecoach has been preserved. It still looks the part, complete with shifty character outside.

Inside the décor is authentic except for the cheesy lifesize cardboard cutout of John Wayne that I’ve left off camera.

The museum stagecoach also looks ready to roll for the next take.

Director John Ford made many films at this venue and had a particular spot he liked to spend time just gazing at the view. It’s now called, predictably, John Ford’s Point and you can pay $5 to sit on a horse contemplating that same vista or $0 doing so on foot.

It’s still a popular film location: literally dozens of movies have been shot here. The museum cinema  has free nightly showings of  early John Wayne movies, but we weren’t here long enough to fit that in.

However, we did take a tour of the Valley, run by Gouldings of course, with a Navajo guide.The Navajo is the subject of our next blog.