Mt. Humphreys

A volcanic remnant rising to 12,637 feet, sacred to Indigenous peoples since before recorded history, named for a nineteenth-century general but carrying far older names.

The physical mountain formed between one million and 93,000 years ago as a stratovolcano built layer upon layer of lava and ash. Before the catastrophic collapse that created the current open-bowl shape on the eastern face, the volcano may have risen to 15,000 or 16,000 feet. But the human story is older than any survey. In Navajo tradition, First Man created the sacred mountains in the time before time, placing Dook'o'oosliid at the western boundary of the land suitable for human habitation. He secured it to earth with a sunbeam, filled it with abalone, and covered it with yellow clouds and evening twilight. The mountain has an inner spiritual form, a bii'istiin, that is not metaphor but reality. For the Hopi, the peaks have always been the home of the katsinam, the kachina spirits who are both ancestors and cloud beings. The reciprocal relationship between people and spirits, village and mountain, ceremony and rain, has structured Hopi life for as long as memory extends. The peak's English name came in 1870, when surveyors honored General Andrew A. Humphreys, Chief of Engineers of the Army Corps. Humphreys never climbed the mountain that bears his name. Its name in Navajo had already been spoken for countless generations.