We left Chinle and headed north. Our next destination was Monument Valley.
"Monument Valley" actually seems to mean at least three things: (1) It is the region along the Utah/Arizona border with the iconic scenery made famous in old western movies, which is what most people mean when they refer to Monument Valley. (2) There is the small town of Monument Valley, Utah, along US Highway 163, which I did not realize existed until we arrived there. (3) There is Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, which was our main destination for the day.
The direct route on the map from Chinle and Canyon de Chelly to Monument Valley NTP seemed to be BIA (that's Bureau of Indian Affairs) 59. However, we could not tell anything about BIA 59, i.e. whether it was paved, etc. The alternative was to stay on US Routes, which Mapquest indicated was longer in miles but the same in time. We therefore opted to take US Route 191 north out of Chinle until it intersected with US 160, then take that west to Kayenta. This was a very interesting trip. The road itself was good and there was some traffic that moved along well, but the region was incredibly desolate. I would not want to have to pay to have a wrecker tow me out of here, but it was very interesting to see.
Although our destination was Monument Valley, we first wanted to stop at Goulding's. Goulding's is the trading post at the same intersection on US 163 as the Navajo Tribal Park, but a mile the other direction. As it turned out, Goulding's was a fascinating place. We spent several hours there and also had lunch.
Harry and Leona "Mike" Goulding first created a trading post here in the 1920's. Originally living and working out of tents, they eventually built a substantial stone building that still stands. The downstairs was the trading post, while the upstairs was their residence. The entire building is now a very interesting museum.
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| Memorial plaque to the Gouldings with some of the fantastic Monument Valley scenery in the background |
However, the story turns out to be much more interesting than just this and, believe it or not, there is also a Santa Barbara connection!
Times were always tough in this region, but even more so during the Depression of the 1930's. Harry Goulding heard rumors that a movie was to be made in the Flagstaff, AZ region. He thought if he could convince the movie company to film in Monument Valley, it might bring jobs to the region and would generally help the local economy. He and his wife Mike therefore traveled to Hollywood to meet with director John Ford.
The story of the meeting between Harry Goulding and John Ford is described in the film strips below. Despite having no appointment and almost not even getting past Ford's secretary, Harry was successful. John Ford brought a large contingent to Monument Valley a few weeks later to film "Stagecoach". "Stagecoach", released in 1939, was the first of many movies filmed in the region. It introduced the world not only to Monument Valley, but to a young new actor, John Wayne.
What sold John Ford on the region was the fantastic scenery. On his trip to see John Ford, Harry had taken a portfolio of Monument Valley photographs with him made by Josef Muench, a photographer Harry had met during Josef's trips to Monument Valley. It was those photographs made by Muench that changed Monument Valley forever.
Who was Josef Muench? Josef Muench had immigrated to the US from Germany in 1928. He worked for two years on the Ford assembly line in Detroit, but soon became restless. He eventually loaded up his new Model T and headed westward. He ran out of money when he hit Santa Barbara, California, but survived by doing landscaping work. However, photography was his passion. His first of many photography trips to Arizona was in 1936. He became widely known for his photography of Arizona. Some of his photographs are on display in the museum at Goulding's (and I suspect other places). His son, David, and his grandson, Marc, both still live in Santa Barbara and are both accomplished photographers in their own right.
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| Some of the stunning scenery from in front of Goulding's |
The upstairs of the museum at Goulding's is furnished with period furniture as when the Goulding's lived there. The downstairs contains information about the trading post and the history of the region. However, we spent most of our time in the movie room, which contained movie posters, photographs, original letters, and other paraphanelia from movies filmed here. We were aware of the John Ford/JohnWayne connection to Monument Valley ("Stagecoach", 1939; "Fort Apache", 1948; "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon", 1949; "The Searchers", 1956) but we did not know so many other movies past and present had been filmed here. These include "2001 A Space Odyssey", 1968; "National Lampoon's Vacation", 1983; "Back to the Future III", 1990; "Forrest Gump", 1993, "Mission Impossible II", 2000; and more recently "The Lone Ranger", 2013, just to mention a few. I was so interested in this that I bought a brochure at the museum and later bought a book in Moab. This list seems reasonably complete for Monument Valley movies.
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| Hanging out with the Duke at Harry and Mike's Place |
I found the story of the Gouldings and the Goulding Trading Post very fascinating and have had fun finding more info tucked away in various corners of the web. Here is an article about the history of Goulding's published in January 2013 in the Deseret News, a newspaper published in Salt Lake City. It was on the occasion of the 2013 Johnny Depp film, "The Lone Ranger", which was filmed in southeast Utah and Monument Valley. (I will have more to say about that in a later post on Dead Horse Point State Park.)
However, the absolute best find from my web research was the following set of three movies. It is a very fascinating history of Goulding's Trading Post from the "Wildlife Unlimited" website, http://wildlifevideo.com/ put together by the company Wildlife Unlimited of Vesper, WI. I am not sure, but it may have aired on "Bill Porter's Wildlife Unlimited Show", a TV show in central Wisconsin. The films contain numerous interesting historical pictures. What makes this so special is that many of the stories are based on conversations with Mike Goulding before she died.
History of Goulding's
Part I
Part II
Part III
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