Tuba City, Arizona

Tuba City is the largest community in the Navajo Nation, home to about eight thousand people and a hub for western Navajo commerce and government. The town's name honors Tuuvi, a Hopi leader from Oraibi who converted to the Mormon faith and in eighteen seventy-two invited members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to settle near Moenkopi. The natural springs here drew Navajo, Hopi, and Paiute people long before European settlement.

Mormon settlers established the town site, but in nineteen oh three the federal government purchased their holdings and made Tuba City headquarters for the Western Navajo Agency. In nineteen fifty-six a uranium processing mill opened nearby, operating until nineteen sixty-six, leaving a contamination legacy the Navajo Nation has spent decades addressing.