Window Rock

The Window Rock/Fort Defiance area is in the southeast corner of the Navajo Reservation, which covers portions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. In the early 1930s, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, John Collier, declard that Tseghahodzani, “the rock with the hole in it,” should be the center of administration for the Navajo Tribe. In 1966, the Bureau of Indian Affairs established an area office in Window Rock. Six miles north is Fort Defiance. Early Navajo settlers were attracted to Tsehotsoi, meaning “meadow between the rocks.” In 1851, Colonel Edwin Sumner selected the site as a military outpost naming it Fort Defiance. It was headquarters for Colonel Kit Carson’s 1863 Navajo Campaign.