The view of the View is nice, but the view from the View is absolutely stunning.
The soon-to-open View is the first hotel in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, and it’s a tribal effort. It was built with Navajo funding and the work crews were more than 90 percent Native American. Artsco, the company contracted by the Navajo Nation Parks and Recreation Department to build and operate the hotel, is a family venture that is 100 percent Navajo owned, and most of the staff of 100 will be Navajo.
The first guests were scheduled to stay at the hotel last Saturday, and a grand opening is set for January. Ninety of the 96 rooms face east, so they look out at East and West Mitten buttes and Merrick Butte in the foreground. To the right, Elephant Butte stands as a giant keeper of the silence. To the left, an unnamed mesa rises to meet sky. These two formations create a gigantic gateway that funnels the vision and senses toward the iconic red sandstone monoliths.
The other six rooms face west toward vistas dominated by Mitchell Butte and Gray Whiskers, spectacular in the daytime, magnificent at sunset.
Each room has a private balcony. Those in east-facing rooms can gaze onto a seemingly endless stretch of red earth and azure sky.
If that gets boring, they can shift their view downward. The resort sits on a bluff overlooking the valley, where tourist vehicles resemble brightly colored insects crawling along Valley Drive, a gravel road that wends its way through the park.
Sunset in Monument Valley is such a magnificent occurrence that the View’s designers included “sunset balconies” on the west side of the building. These large viewing areas are built to take advantage of the last rays of the day, when the formations shift from red to ocher to purple. When the sun falls below the horizon, the buttes and the mesas seem like giant cutouts silhouetted against a flaming sky.
But back to the basics.
The hotel stands three stories high and stretches more than 100 yards. It was designed to be environmentally friendly and features a low contour that conforms to the mesa it sits on so it doesn’t disrupt the scenery. The hotel has low-flow water devices and energy-efficient windows and fluorescent lighting. Operable windows in all public spaces allow natural airflow for cooling, and the west side of the building has an extra inch of insulation and limited window and door openings to reduce the afternoon heat.
Sliding-glass doors to the balconies are protected from sun and rain by overhangs, and the roof is reflective to reduce heat absorption.
Room amenities include flat-screen TVs, Internet access, refrigerators, microwaves and coffeemakers. Rooms are named after prominent Navajos, including several Code Talkers who were instrumental in American victories in the South Pacific during World War II. The hotel is decorated with Native American art and weavings. There’s also an exercise room and three conference rooms.
The lobby rises two stories and features an oversize fireplace made of natural stone and intricate ironwork. The ironwork was designed and executed by Ben Smith, the brother-in-law of Art Ortega, who owns the hotel with his daughter Amanda.
An enclosed bridge takes guests from the lobby to the View Restaurant, where the scenery is a prelude to the meal. The restaurant seats 216 and serves traditional American fare with Native American flair. Eggs Begay, for example, is poached eggs and ham served on fry bread, covered with hollandaise sauce. A smaller express restaurant (capacity: 90) serves a limited menu.
Outside the restaurant is a winding pathway through terraced gardens. Visitors who take that route will pass a large blank wall that will serve as a screen for nightly showings of John Wayne movies. The beloved cowboy actor starred in several films made in Monument Valley, including Stagecoach, Fort Apache and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
The resort includes the Trading Post gift shop, which features jewelry made by area artisans, and a visitor center.
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