Monument Valley Forrest Gump Point
— — the road that runs straight at the buttes.
Not only on a wall.
“A pull-off on US-163 about thirteen miles north of the Arizona-Utah line, looking back south toward the Monument Valley buttes. The frame is the one from the closing scene of the 1994 film, the road running dead straight into the sandstone. Traffic is light most of the day and cars stop in the road for the picture. The buttes change colour by the hour as the sun moves across them. Morning gives the side facing east; the late afternoon gives the side most people remember. The land south of the line belongs to the Navajo Nation; the viewpoint sits in Utah, but the buttes do not.
Monument Valley Forrest Gump Point, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Forrest Gump Point is an informal name for a roadside view on US-163 about 13 miles north of the Arizona-Utah border, near mile marker 13 in San Juan County, Utah. The road runs south from there straight toward the Monument Valley buttes on the Navajo Nation. The viewpoint became widely known after the 1994 film Forrest Gump used the spot for the scene in which the title character ends his cross-country run. US-163 itself is a National Scenic Byway between Bluff, Utah and Kayenta, Arizona, and the Monument Valley stretch is its most photographed segment.
The buttes south of the viewpoint are de Chelly Sandstone, an iron-rich Permian formation. The red the rock takes in the last hour of sunlight is the colour the iron oxide gives back to a low-angle warm beam, and it shifts by the minute. Morning lights the east faces and leaves the road in long shadow; late afternoon lights the west faces and turns the road itself amber. The drive is roughly four hours from Page, Arizona and three hours from Moab, Utah, which puts most travellers on the road at the wrong hour for the best light.
There is no official facility, sign, or parking lot — just a wide shoulder on US-163. Visitors should pull fully off the pavement; traffic moves at 65 miles per hour on this stretch and the buttes draw eyes off the road. Photographers who stand in the lane have caused crashes. The viewpoint sits in Utah, but the buttes themselves are on the Navajo Nation, and entering the valley itself requires a Navajo guide and the Navajo Tribal Park entrance at the end of US-163 in Arizona. Spring and fall give the easier light and the lighter traffic.