New Mexico
Two long volcanic dikes radiate out from Shiprock (seen here above and to the right of the formation) and stretch for miles across the high desert of northwest New Mexico.
Northwest New Mexico is an arid sea of desert, and rising from the waterless land is Shiprock: a 1500-foot-high monolith that dominates the landscape. From above, black horizontal dikes (formed when magma fills a rock fracture) radiate outward for miles from the central rock, which reaches a high point 7177 feet above sea level. The Navajo call Shiprock Tsé Bitảí, “rock with wings.” Indeed, some say that from the north and south, the rock looks like a bird with its wings folded. In the 1870s, however, the U.S. Geological Survey officially named the rock for its likeness to a many-sailed clipper ship.
Shiprock is the eroded remains of a volcano. More specifically, the exposed rock we see today was once the throat—or central feeder pipe that ejects lava—of a volcano that erupted 3000 feet underground. Erosion of the surface layers has exposed a diatreme, a volcanic vent formed by a gaseous explosion. The diatreme is composed of dark volcanic rocks that contain fractured breccia (rock made of angular fragments) and vertical dikes of minette. Shiprock is the most prominent formation in the Navajo Volcanic Field, a series of intrusive eruptions that took place underground approximately 25 million years ago. Dating of Shiprock’s dikes suggests that its eruption took place slightly earlier, around 27 million years ago.
Located deep in Navajo Nation land, Shiprock is off limits to outside visitors. Many native legends swirl around Shiprock. According to one, the rock was once a giant bird that carried the Navajo people from the cold north to the Four Corners region (where corners of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico meet). Other stories tell of a village that sat atop the rock until a lightning strike obliterated the access trail, trapping the people on top, where their ghosts still haunt the summit. Another story places Shiprock in a geographical context related to the Four Corners region, as part of a mythical figure known as Goods of Value Mountain. The figure is made up of nearby land features: its body is the Chuska Mountains, the head is Chuska Peak, the legs are the Carrizo Mountains, and Beautiful Mountain is the feet. In this story, Shiprock represents the medicine pouch or weapon carried by the figure and the rock is celebrated as a source of wisdom and power.
Shiprock, a long-eroded volcanic remnant, is one of the most prominent features of the Four Corners region, where corners of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico come together.
At times in the past, Navajo warriors may have climbed Shiprock on vision quests, but today, climbing Shiprock is strictly forbidden. Determined (and some say disrespectful) non-Navajo rock climbers sometimes illegally poach the climb, however. In fact, the Navajo Nation forbids climbing throughout all its lands, citing traditional taboos surrounding death that may haunt accident sites for many years after a fatal fall.
You might fly over Shiprock en route to Cortez, Colorado, but you’re more likely to see it if you charter a flight. Look for a jagged, dark rock that stands apart from the surrounding landscape, with radiating dikes extending outward from its base for miles.
