Four Corners
Anasazi Indian Village
State Park
Utah
A well-preserved village from 1050 CE with hands-on exhibits and ancient pottery close enough to examine in remarkable detail.
The real world behind the stories
EXPLORE
Cedar Wash is made up. Everything around it isn't. Here are 58 real places across the American West the series lives in.
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Showing 58 places
KEY LOCATION
Desert Southwest
Arches
National Park
Utah
Over 2,000 natural stone arches in one park, including Delicate Arch — a 60-foot freestanding span of orange sandstone standing against open sky.
KEY LOCATION
Mountain West
Badlands
National Park
South Dakota
A strange landscape of sharp spires, eroded buttes, and fossil-rich sediment — the Lakota Sioux called it 'mako sica,' bad land, and the name stuck.
Desert Southwest
Bandelier
National Monument
New Mexico
Cave dwellings and pueblos built into pink-orange cliffs by the Ancestral Puebloans around 1150 CE, with hand-carved footholds still visible in the stone.
Desert Southwest
Big Bend
National Park
Texas
Where the Rio Grande bends along the US-Mexico border, creating a wild landscape of desert, mountains, and river canyons in far west Texas.
Mountain West
Bighorn Canyon
National Recreation Area
Montana / Wyoming
The Bighorn River cuts a 71-mile canyon through walls reaching 2,500 feet, while wild mustangs roam the Pryor Mountains on the canyon rim above.
Desert Southwest
Black Canyon of the Gunnison
National Park
Colorado
A gorge so narrow some sections receive only 33 minutes of sunlight daily — the river drops steeper here than the Colorado does through the Grand Canyon.
Mountain West
Bonneville Salt Flats
Landmark
Utah
Thirty thousand acres of dead-flat, blinding white salt where world land speed records are broken — and the horizon visibly curves away in every direction.
KEY LOCATION
Desert Southwest
Bryce Canyon
National Park
Utah
Not a canyon but a series of amphitheaters filled with hoodoos — tall spires of colorful rock that glow orange and pink in the early morning light.
KEY LOCATION
Four Corners
Canyon de Chelly
National Monument
Arizona
A stunning canyon where Navajo families still live and farm amid thousand-year-old cliff ruins. Spider Rock rises 800 feet from the canyon floor.
Desert Southwest
Canyonlands
National Park
Utah
Where the Colorado and Green Rivers meet, dividing the park into three vast districts of spires, mesas, and canyons carved over millions of years.
Four Corners
Canyons of the Ancients
National Monument
Colorado
The highest density of archaeological sites in the US — over 6,000 recorded ruins of the ancient Puebloan people scattered across mesa and canyon country.
Desert Southwest
Capitol Reef
National Park
Utah
A 100-mile wrinkle in the Earth's crust — a colorful waterpocket fold that blocked westward travel for early settlers, who named it after an ocean reef.
Desert Southwest
Carlsbad Caverns
National Park
New Mexico
A cathedral-sized underground cave where 400,000 Mexican free-tailed bats spiral out at sunset in one of nature's most spectacular nightly performances.
Desert Southwest
Cedar Breaks
National Monument
Utah
A natural amphitheater carved 2,000 feet deep into layered limestone at 10,000 feet elevation — like Bryce Canyon, but above the clouds.
Four Corners
Chaco Culture
National Historical Park
New Mexico
The center of Ancestral Puebloan civilization for 300 years, with enormous great houses aligned precisely with the movements of the sun and moon.
Mountain West
Cimarron Grasslands
National Grassland
Kansas
The only national grassland in Kansas preserves the short-grass prairie that once blanketed the Great Plains — and the ruts of the Santa Fe Trail are still visible.
Desert Southwest
Colorado National Monument
National Monument
Colorado
Towering red sandstone monoliths and deep canyons near Grand Junction, with a Rim Rock Drive that rivals any scenic road in the American West.
Mountain West
Craters of the Moon
National Monument
Idaho
A vast black lava field from eruptions as recent as 2,000 years ago — lava tubes to explore, cinder cones to climb, and a landscape from another world.
Desert Southwest
Curecanti
National Recreation Area
Colorado
Three reservoirs form a blue chain through western Colorado's canyon country, with osprey nesting overhead and exceptional fishing in the waters below.
Mountain West
Devils Tower
National Monument
Wyoming
A flat-topped column of igneous rock rising 867 feet from the Wyoming plains — sacred to many Plains tribes and a formation unlike anything else in the region.
Desert Southwest
Dinosaur
National Monument
Colorado / Utah
Where the Green and Yampa Rivers converge through rock holding some of the finest Jurassic dinosaur fossil deposits ever discovered.
Four Corners
Edge of the Cedars
State Park & Museum
Utah
A 1,000-year-old Ancestral Puebloan village in Blanding with a museum holding thousands of years of Four Corners pottery and tools.
Desert Southwest
Flaming Gorge
National Recreation Area
Utah
The Red Canyon section shows 300-foot cliffs of brilliant red rock plunging into deep blue water — one of the most dramatic reservoir drives in the West.
Desert Southwest
Florissant Fossil Beds
National Monument
Colorado
Insects and leaves preserved in volcanic ash 34 million years ago, including the stumps of petrified giant sequoias that once towered here.
Desert Southwest
Garden of the Gods
State Park
Colorado
Massive red sandstone fins rise vertically against Pikes Peak — formations named Balanced Rock and Kissing Camels — and it's free to explore.
Mountain West
Glacier
National Park
Montana
Over 700 miles of trails wind through valleys carved by ancient glaciers, with Going-to-the-Sun Road threading through scenery that stops you cold.
Four Corners
Goblin Valley
State Park
Utah
Thousands of mushroom-shaped hoodoos fill a valley unlike anywhere else on Earth, shaped by millions of years of gentle wind and water erosion.
Four Corners
Goosenecks State Park
State Park
Utah
One of the world's finest entrenched river meanders — the San Juan River coils 1,000 feet below in sweeping hairpin curves through ancient seabed rock.
KEY LOCATION
Desert Southwest
Grand Canyon
National Park
Arizona
One mile deep, 18 miles wide, and 277 miles long — the Grand Canyon exposes two billion years of Earth's geology in breathtaking, layered color.
KEY LOCATION
Mountain West
Grand Teton
National Park
Wyoming
Jagged granite peaks rise straight from the valley floor with no foothills, creating one of the most dramatic mountain skylines in North America.
KEY LOCATION
Desert Southwest
Great Sand Dunes
National Park
Colorado
The tallest sand dunes in North America rise 750 feet against the snowcapped Sangre de Cristo Mountains — a landscape from another world.
Desert Southwest
Guadalupe Mountains
National Park
Texas
An ancient Permian reef rises from the Texas desert — the state's highest peak is here, and a canyon that blazes gold with maple leaves each fall.
KEY LOCATION
Desert Southwest
Havasupai Falls
Tribal Land
Arizona
Brilliant turquoise waterfalls cascade into travertine pools deep in a Grand Canyon side canyon, reachable only by a 10-mile hike or horseback.
Four Corners
Hovenweep
National Monument
Colorado / Utah
Mysterious square, circular, and D-shaped towers perched at the edges of canyons, built by the Ancestral Puebloans around 1200 CE.
KEY LOCATION
Desert Southwest
Lake Powell
National Recreation Area
Utah / Arizona
A 186-mile reservoir with hidden slot canyons, natural arches, and alcoves accessible only by boat on water as blue as the desert sky above.
KEY LOCATION
Four Corners
Mesa Verde
National Park
Colorado
Ancient cliff dwellings carved into canyon walls, home to the Ancestral Puebloans who vanished 700 years ago — one of the most remarkable archaeological sites in North America.
Desert Southwest
Meteor Crater
Landmark
Arizona
A mile-wide, 550-foot-deep impact crater formed when a nickel-iron meteorite struck the Arizona desert 50,000 years ago — one of the best-preserved on Earth.
Four Corners
Mexican Hat
Landmark
Utah
A balanced sandstone formation shaped like an upside-down sombrero, somehow defying gravity above the San Juan River valley.
Four Corners
Moki Dugway & Muley Point
Scenic Drive
Utah
A gravel switchback road carved into the sheer face of Cedar Mesa, descending 1,100 feet with sweeping views across the Valley of the Gods.
Desert Southwest
Montezuma Castle & Well
National Monument
Arizona
A five-story cliff dwelling in a natural limestone alcove, mistakenly named after the Aztec emperor by Spanish explorers who couldn't believe native peoples built it.
KEY LOCATION
Four Corners
Monument Valley
Navajo Tribal Park
Arizona / Utah
Towering sandstone buttes rise from a sea of red desert sand on Navajo Nation land — one of the most instantly recognized landscapes on Earth.
KEY LOCATION
Mountain West
Mount Rushmore
National Memorial
South Dakota
The carved faces of four presidents emerge from a granite mountain in the Black Hills — a monument that makes you think about what a nation is built on.
Four Corners
Natural Bridges
National Monument
Utah
Three massive stone bridges — Sipapu, Kachina, and Owachomo — carved by stream erosion through red sandstone, with ancient cliff dwellings nearby.
Four Corners
Navajo National Monument
National Monument
Arizona
Home to Betatakin and Keet Seel, two of the Southwest's most dramatic cliff dwellings, tucked into a massive natural alcove in the canyon walls.
Four Corners
Newspaper Rock
State Historic Monument
Utah
A single sandstone panel covered with over 650 petroglyphs spanning 2,000 years of human history — one of the world's great collections of rock art.
Mountain West
Nez Perce
National Historical Park
Idaho
Sites across Idaho tell the story of the Nez Perce people and their remarkable 1,170-mile flight in 1877, pursued across four states by the US Army.
Desert Southwest
Petrified Forest
National Park
Arizona
Ancient logs turned to crystal over 225 million years lie scattered across the Painted Desert — a badlands of purple, red, and blue rock.
Desert Southwest
Petroglyph
National Monument
New Mexico
Seventeen miles of volcanic escarpment on Albuquerque's west edge hold over 20,000 images carved into black basalt by Pueblo peoples over centuries.
Desert Southwest
Rainbow Bridge
National Monument
Utah
The world's largest known natural arch — a 290-foot span of salmon-pink sandstone sacred to multiple Native nations, reached by boat from Lake Powell.
KEY LOCATION
Mountain West
Rocky Mountain
National Park
Colorado
Trail Ridge Road — the highest continuous paved highway in the US — crosses the Continental Divide at 12,183 feet through alpine meadows and elk country.
Mountain West
Theodore Roosevelt
National Park
North Dakota
The Dakota Badlands that shaped a young Roosevelt into a conservationist — wild bison herds still roam the colorful canyon country of the Little Missouri River.
Four Corners
Valley of the Gods
Scenic Area
Utah
A remote valley of red sandstone towers named for Navajo deities — a miniature Monument Valley on a quiet 17-mile dirt road with almost no crowds.
Desert Southwest
White Sands
National Park
New Mexico
The world's largest gypsum dune field — 275 square miles of brilliant white sand that stays cool even in summer, perfect for year-round sledding.
Mountain West
Wind Cave & Jewel Cave
National Park
South Dakota
Two of the world's longest caves wind beneath the Black Hills — Wind Cave holds rare boxwork formations; Jewel Cave, calcite crystals lining every wall.
Desert Southwest
Wupatki & Sunset Crater
National Monument
Arizona
Red brick pueblos built near a volcanic cinder cone that erupted around 1085 CE — an event that drew three different ancient cultures together.
KEY LOCATION
Mountain West
Yellowstone
National Park
Wyoming
The world's first national park sits atop a supervolcano, producing more than half of Earth's geysers including Old Faithful — a window into the living planet.
KEY LOCATION
Desert Southwest
Zion
National Park
Utah
Hike the Narrows through knee-deep water between canyon walls 2,000 feet high, carved by the Virgin River through towers of red and white sandstone.
ABOUT THE PEOPLE OF THIS PLACE
The Four Corners is home to Navajo, Ute, Hopi and Pueblo communities — past and very much present. Explore content about Indigenous history and contemporary life is developed with community review, and always names living communities in the present tense.
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