Chinle: Gateway to Canyon de Chelly

Chinle sits at the mouth of Canyon de Chelly, and its name comes from the Navajo word meaning roughly "the place where water flows out." The canyon it guards has been inhabited for more than four thousand years, from the Ancestral Puebloans who carved cliff dwellings into the red sandstone to the Diné families who still farm its floor today. The community became the administrative center for Canyon de Chelly National Monument in nineteen thirty-one.

Unlike most national monuments, Canyon de Chelly remains Navajo Nation land, and all canyon floor tours require a Navajo guide. Chinle itself is home to around five thousand people and serves as one of the larger towns on the reservation, with a hospital, schools, and the Thunderbird Lodge, which began as a trading post in nineteen oh two.