Marathon Pundit: Four Corners Furtherance: Monument Valley at sunset

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Four Corners Furtherance: Monument Valley at sunset

John Wayne reportedly said that Monument Valley is where "God put the West." To the north of the valley is Moab, Utah, a gateway town adjacent to Arches National Park. The people of Moab claim "The Duke" said the same thing about their town.

To many people, Monument Valley, which straddles southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona, Monument Valley is the West--so I'm going to choose sides and declare divinity lies there. I never heard of Moab until I began planning Four Corners Furtherance.

If God put the West in Monument Valley, it was up to director John Ford to serve as its prophet. His first talking-picture western was Stagecoach, which made John Wayne, previously a fixture in B-movies, a star. Stagecoach was filmed in Monument Valley.

Ford and Wayne returned to make other westerns there, including Fort Apache, Rio Grande, and The Searchers. An underrated later Ford film, Cheyenne Autumn, an attempt to balance Ford's previous narratives portraying Indians as savages and villainous props, was the final Ford movie to be filmed in Monument Valley.

Mrs. Marathon Pundit read that sunset and sunrise are the best times to take photographs of Monument Valley. All of today's photos are from sunset.

Click on any image to make it larger.

Oh, there's one Ford/Wayne movie I saved for last. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon contains a famous sunset scene where the US Cavalry travels through the valley--Ford captured a rare desert thunderstorm. It was "the luck of the Irish" lamented jealous film makers.