Canyon de Chelly National Monument
Apache County, northeastern Arizona, within the Navajo Nation, United States
A Navajo Nation canyon managed with the National Park Service, holding Ancestral Puebloan ruins and about forty farming families today, where the rim is free to drive and the canyon floor is entered only with an authorized Navajo guide.
Canyon de Chelly has been farmed, lived in, and fought over for close to two thousand years, and unlike most park units it is not federal land: the monument, established in 1931 across 83,840 acres of three canyon systems, sits entirely on Navajo Tribal Trust land inside the Navajo Nation, and about forty Navajo families still farm and live on the canyon floor. Its recorded history is hard: a Spanish massacre at Massacre Cave in 1805, the Kit Carson campaign of 1863-64 that destroyed Navajo orchards and hogans and ended in the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo. The canyon also holds some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan sites in the Southwest, from White House Ruin, open via the monument's only self-guided trail, to Mummy Cave and Antelope House, and the 750-foot Spider Rock spire, which Navajo tradition identifies as the home of Spider Grandmother.
Visiting splits cleanly along the rim. Both rim drives and their ten overlooks are free and open all year, and the Welcome Center operates daily except three holidays, from 8 to 5. The White House Trail is the single trail a visitor may hike alone, 2.5 miles round trip down about 600 feet, currently open though the park says the Navajo Nation may run it seasonally with fees in the future. Everything below the rim, by horseback, vehicle, or on foot, requires an authorized Navajo guide and a backcountry permit, which is the access rule that expresses the arrangement itself: the canyon is home ground, and entering it is a matter for Navajo-guided visits, not independent exploration. A December 2024 FAA/NPS decision bans commercial air tours over the monument from June 2025, keeping the canyon's soundscape out of the tour economy.
Visiting
The National Park Service covers the monument: no entrance fee; Welcome Center daily 8 to 5 except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day; ten rim overlooks open year-round; the White House Trail (2.5 miles round trip) is the only self-guided trail and is currently open. Canyon-floor tours require an authorized Navajo guide and a backcountry permit; the operator list comes from Navajo Nation Parks and Recreation at 928-674-2106.
Photo: [CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:00_699_USA_Arizona_-_Canyon_de_Chelly_National_Monument.jpg)
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories