Navajo Mountain

Landform in Utah and Arizona, United States
The Colorado Plateau is made of mostly flat lying layers of sedimentary rock that record paleoclimate extremes ranging from oceans to widespread deserts over the last 1.8 billion years. The peak of Navajo Mountain, at approximately 10388 feet (3166 m), is made up of uplifted Dakota Sandstone deposited during the Cretaceous Period (approximately 66 138 million years ago).

The Navajo Mountain region has special cultural significance to the Navajo people, who know it as ("Earth Head" or "Pollen Mountain"). Together with Rainbow Bridge to the northwest, Navajo Mountain figures prominently as the first settlement area in western Navajo origin stories. Following the military defeat of the Diné (Navajo people) by United States forces in 1863, the political landscape was changed by new boundaries and major physical alterations. The establishment of Rainbow Bridge National Monument (1910), and the filling of Glen Canyon by Lake Powell in 1963, has facilitated tourism of this previously remote region. Access to Navajo Mountain is still regulated by the sovereign Navajo Nation, and a permit is required to hike in the region. Climbing the mountain itself is forbidden. Before becoming part of the Navajo Nation, the area was inhabited by the Ancestral Puebloans. Their descendants, the Hopi, call Navajo Mountain Tokonave, or "Heart of the Earth". Ruins in the area of Navajo Mountain are still strongly associated with certain Hopi clans, with priests still making pilgrimages to shrines in the area. The community of Navajo Mountain, Utah is to the east.

The Navajo Mountain beardtongue (Penstemon navajoa) is a rare plant limited mainly to the upper elevation slopes of Navajo Mountain.