After you skirt a hardscrabble section of the Navajo town of Chinle, Canyon de Chelly National Monument—which you can practice pronouncing, Canyon de Shay, on your drive—feels like a red rock paradise. Sandstone cliffs enclose a series of connecting canyons, where local kids cool off in shallow creeks, and cottonwood trees, glowing with golden leaves in fall, line the banks. Tucked away in side canyons are orchards of peaches, apricots, and apples, plus well-tended plots of corn. Many of the farms still have log hogans, the traditional six- or eight-sided Navajo house, while high on the canyon walls, cliff dwellings, some 1,100 years old, attest to Canyon de Chelly’s deep and in many ways tragic history. On one cliff face, local Navajo say the petroglyph of a horseman near a crack in the rock prefigures Kit Carson’s 1864 arrival and the subsequent massacre and capture of most of the Canyon de Chelly’s residents. In Canyon del Muerto—the Canyon of Death—some 300 Navajo took refuge atop an 800-foot-high butte, now known as Fortress Rock, and outlasted the siege. Many of the area’s Navajo trace their ancestry back to those survivors. For them, Canyon de Chelly is not just a beautiful haven for the traditional ways, but a stronghold. A Navajo Masada. Canyon entry $2, overlooks free; nps.gov/cach.