Take a scenic ride through the remote beauty of the Navajo Nation as we follow U.S. Route 160 from Mexican Water to Red Mesa, Arizona. This 20-mile stretch may seem brief, but it winds through a stark, high-desert landscape steeped in indigenous heritage, quiet isolation, and the natural drama of the Colorado Plateau. It’s a route that feels less like a shortcut and more like a passage through timeless land.
We begin our journey in Mexican Water, a small unincorporated community named for a spring that once provided water to travelers along the old trading routes. From this quiet junction, US-160 heads eastward, skirting the northern edges of Monument Valley country. The road here is wide-open and flanked by low mesas and red sandstone outcroppings that rise abruptly from the otherwise flat terrain. As we drive, the sparse population and wide sky lend a meditative quality to the road—a sense of movement through space where nature speaks louder than anything manmade.
Shortly after departing, we climb gradually onto a high desert plain, where the subtle colors of the landscape shift with the light: ochres and deep rust in the morning, fading to dusty purples and pale grays by evening. Small roadside pull-offs offer sweeping vistas of the surrounding mesas and buttes, many of which are part of the Navajo Volcanic Field, an ancient geologic region known for its unusual rock formations like Shiprock to the northeast and Agathla Peak to the west. Every few miles, a cluster of homes or a wind-worn hogan may appear near the road, reminders that this land remains deeply inhabited and culturally alive, even if sparsely populated.
As we approach Red Mesa, a small census-designated place nestled near its namesake geological feature, the landscape begins to change again. The horizon is now framed by the broad shoulders of the Red Mesa formation itself—its flat top a vivid crimson in the afternoon sun. This community serves as a modest but vital hub for the surrounding area, with a school, chapter house, and trading post offering supplies and support to residents spread across the remote terrain. The road flattens here, signaling our descent into a slightly lower elevation, where sagebrush and hardy grasses reclaim the roadside.
Though the segment ends in Red Mesa, the highway presses on—east toward Teec Nos Pos and the Four Corners Monument, where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico meet. But this stretch, from Mexican Water to Red Mesa, feels like a quiet meditation on what it means to move through Indigenous land: not as a tourist passing through, but as a respectful observer of a living landscape shaped by tradition, endurance, and the rhythm of the desert.
🎵 Music:
Sovereign Quarter Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Piano March by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/
🗺️ Route Map
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