Geographic Reference

Flagstaff is a city in Northern Arizona and is the county seat of Coconino County. The Coconino National Forest just outside the city limits is the largest contiguous Ponderosa pine forest in North America. The presence of Ponderosa pine gave the city its name when a Boston scouting party raised a Ponderosa flagpole in honor of the United States Centennial, and the place where it was raised was called Flagstaff. The settlement originally grew in size due to the establishment of a sawmill by E.E. Ayer and the arrival of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. The Navajo name for Flagstaff is Kin Łání Dook’o’oosłííd Biyaagi or “Many Houses Below San Francisco Mountains.”

Farmington is a town located in northern New Mexico between the San Juan, La Plata, and Animas Rivers in San Juan County. The name for this settlement in Navajo is Tóta, meaning "Between the Waters.” The area of Farmington was originally settled by Ancestral Puebloans, as evidenced by the nearby Salmon Ruins and the Aztec Ruins. After the Ancestral Puebloans abandoned the Farmington area, it was occupied by the Navajo, Utes, and the Jicarilla Apache. The current town was incorporated in 1901, and a narrow gauge railroad to Durango, Colorado was completed in 1905. There was a significant population increase in the 1950’s after the San Juan Basin Natural Gas Pipeline was constructed.

The Chuska Mountain Range runs along the Arizona-New Mexico border and lays within Apache County in Arizona and McKinley and San Juan Counties in New Mexico. The Navajo name for the mountain range is Níłtsą́ Dził, meaning Rainy Mountain, and in Navajo mythology, Chuska Peak is believed to be the head of a male figure called Y’odí Dził, or “Goods of Value Mountain.""

A city in northeastern Massachusetts famous for its brutal and bloody witch trials in the 1692, where religious leaders of the town convicted 19 women of witchcraft and condemned them to death by hanging. The town was founded by Roger Conant in 1629 and was the location of the first Congregational Church. Salem became a shipbuilding center of the East coast in the 18th and 19th centuries.

A deep canyon system located in northeastern Arizona, within the Navajo Nation. The red sandstone walls intermittently break into the ledged cliff-dwellings that give the canyon its name. These early sites were abandoned around 1400 CE as part of a mysterious mass disappearance of the peoples who had inhabited cliff dwellings throughout the Southwest. The Navajo began to settle in and around the canyon during the eighteenth century, pushed westward by Spanish settlements along the Rio Grande, and by rising antagonisms with the Comanche and Ute tribes to the north and east. Decades of altercations over control of the area culminated in Kit Carson's brutal pursuit of the United States' Navajo removal policy. In 1864, Carson and his troops brutally forced thousands of Navajos to march in the "Long Walk” from Canyon de Chelley to forced incarceration on a "reservation" at Bosque Redondo. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Navajo died due to starvation, exposure, and illness. In 1868, Canyon de Chelley, Many Ruins Canyon, and other portions of Navajo Country were returned to the Navajo. The canyon was designated a National Monument in 1931 and has remained vital to the Navajo spiritually, agriculturally, and culturally as their home. Many of the “yeiis,” or spiritual beings, are believed to reside within the canyon system.

A valley that surrounds the Zuni River in northwestern New Mexico. The Valley of Hot Waters is central to Zuni cosmology.

In 1896, Utah became the 45th state to join the United States, and Salt Lake City was named its capital. The Great Salt Lake, after which the capital is named, is the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere. The state itself was named after the Ute people, and Utah remains home to five distinct Native American Tribes including the Ute, Paiute, Goshute, Navajo, and Shoshone. In 1869, Promontory Point, UT was the site of completion for the first transcontinental railroad. Utah is also one of the four-corner states, including New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona, which all connect at right angles.

Utah boasts some of the country's best mountain biking trails, hiking, rock climbing, scenery, and skiing. It is also host to a cluster of National Parks, inlcuding Zion National Park, Arches National Park, which features over 2,000 natural rock arches, Bryce Canyon, and many other parks, forests, and recreation areas.

A small community in New Mexico located east of the Chuska Mountains and 60 miles north of Gallup. Its Navajo name "Tó Háálí" means “water flows up,” which references the numerous springs in the area. There is a trading post and a Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) boarding school in the town.

In 1912, Arizona became the 48th and last contiguous state to join the United States. The capital, Phoenix, became one of the fastest growing cities in the country after the invention of air conditioning occurred in the 1950s. Nicknamed the "Grand Canyon State," Arizona is home to Grand Canyon National Park. Bordered by California and Nevada to the west, Utah to the north, New Mexico to the east, and the country of Mexico to the south, Arizona occupies the central portion of the Southwestern region of the United States.

Arizona is also the state with the most land designated to Native American nations. The state is home to 22 distinct tribes, the largest group being the Navajo, whose reservation extends into Utah and New Mexico and contains many of its own attractions including Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Navajo Nation Window Rock Monument & Veterans Memorial Park, Rainbow Natural Bridge, and Chaco Cultural National Historical Park.

The Short Mountain Trading Post is a fictional landmark landmark located in the extremely barren area of Short Mountain Territory, also fictional, east of Tuba City near Black Mesa. The trading post has few customers and has been advertised as for sale for more than 40 years.

A trading post is an establishment where goods can be traded. It is also a social center where news and gossip are exchanged. Trading posts have been associated with American frontier culture since the seventeenth century. Overtime, trading posts developed into a cultural institution, at first funded and backed by empire, later by national interests, and most often by enterprising business men. Trading posts became centralized hubs in a network of exchange that both participated in and circumvented the burgeoning capitalist system that was imported into the Americas along with settler colonialism. Although trading posts were initially intended to provide support to the European traders and trappers who traced their way over the North American continent, Native American groups were also drawn into the posts' exchange network, trading furs, pelts, and even scalps for finished goods such as steel knives, firearms, woven textiles, and food stuffs including alcohol. Although not every post was poorly managed, trading posts earned a nefarious reputation for taking advantage of Native traders by offering poor exchange rates, trading with products that were infected with diseases, and promoting the purchase and use of alcohol. Many trading posts are still in existence and are also preserved as National Historic Sites.