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| Navajo National Monument is located within the Navajo Nation in northwestern Arizona. The national monument was established in 1909 and encompasses about 360 acres. The park features spectacular scenery of parts of Skeleton Mesa (and greater Shonto Plateau within the even greater Colorado Plateau). Triassic- and Jurassic-age rock formations are exposed in Long Canyon and side canyons that cut through the upland region. The park also features protected archeological sites and partially "restored" ruins of Ancestral Puebloan people. The ancestral people, referred to as the Kayenta, began living in the canyons around the National Monument in about A. D. 600. The construction of the large pueblos began around A.D. 1250 and peaked around A. D. 1290. The people migrated elsewhere in the following decade (Linford, 2000). |
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