Explore the real-world places that appear in The Rainbow Trail by Zane Grey. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Rainbow Bridge, Monument Valley, Surprise Valley (Nonnezoshe Boco), Stonebridge (Bluff, Utah), The Sagi (Tsegi Canyon) and 8 more.
San Juan County, Utah — Shefford's ultimate spiritual landmark
Rainbow Bridge serves as the transcendent, almost mythical destination that anchors the entire novel. John Shefford journeys toward this sacred natural arch as a symbol of hope and redemption — both for himself, a disgraced minister, and for Fay Larkin. Grey portrays the Bridge as a divine creation beyond human comprehension, its crimson arc soaring against the desert sky in a scene of breathtaking wonder that restores Shefford's battered faith.
Rainbow Bridge was largely unknown to non-Native Americans until 1909, when a joint expedition led by Byron Cummings and William Douglass reached it with Paiute guides. The Navajo considered it sacred. Zane Grey himself visited in 1913 and wrote about it extensively, calling it one of the world's great wonders.
Rainbow Bridge National Monument, managed by the National Park Service, is accessible by boat across Lake Powell or by a demanding 14-mile overland hike through Navajo Nation land. It remains one of the largest natural bridges on Earth at 290 feet high.
Visit: Rainbow Bridge National Monument (monument)
Navajo Nation, Utah-Arizona Border — the sweeping red desert stage
The towering sandstone buttes and mesas of Monument Valley form the raw, unforgiving backdrop across which John Shefford rides in pursuit of Fay Larkin. Grey describes the great red monoliths rising like cathedral walls from the desert floor, dwarfing the human figures who move among them. The landscape itself becomes an antagonist — trackless, burning hot, and indifferent to the desperate lives playing out beneath the ancient rock.
Monument Valley has been home to the Navajo people for centuries, who call it Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii. Its iconic buttes — the Mittens, Merrick Butte, and others — were formed by erosion over 50 million years. The region gained worldwide fame as a film location beginning with John Ford's westerns in the late 1930s.
Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park offers guided tours, a scenic 17-mile drive, and the Visitor Center operated by the Navajo Nation. It remains one of the most photographed landscapes in the American West.
Visit: Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park (park)
Hidden canyon plateau, Utah — Fay Larkin's prison and refuge
Surprise Valley is the hidden, walled canyon where Fay Larkin has been kept prisoner among the community of sealed wives, cut off entirely from the outside world. Shefford first glimpses Fay here — ethereal, blonde, wild as a creature of the canyon itself — and is immediately captivated. The valley is so remote and so jealously guarded by the fundamentalist community that even approaching it means risking a violent death, and escape seems nearly impossible.
Grey based Surprise Valley on the labyrinthine canyon country of the Navajo Mountain region in southern Utah, a landscape almost entirely unknown to white Americans at the time of the novel's writing. The slot canyons and hidden alcoves of this plateau are real geological features formed by millennia of wind and water erosion.
The broader Navajo Mountain and Navajo Canyon region remains extremely remote and largely undeveloped. Parts of it are accessible through Navajo Nation permits, and the landscape retains the wild, isolating character Grey described.
San Juan County, Utah — the Mormon border settlement
Stonebridge is the nearest outpost of civilization to the hidden canyon country, a fundamentalist Mormon village where Shefford gathers information and cautiously navigates the community's suspicion of outsiders. The townsfolk are deeply guarded, some complicit in the network of sealed wives, and Shefford must tread carefully — winning trust, gathering allies, and deciphering the social codes of this insular desert community before he can mount his rescue attempt.
Bluff, Utah was settled in 1880 by Mormon pioneers who completed the extraordinary Hole-in-the-Rock expedition, blasting a wagon passage through sheer canyon walls to reach the San Juan River. It became one of the most isolated Mormon settlements in the Southwest and faced decades of hardship.
Bluff is a small, scenic town of roughly 300 residents that serves as a gateway to Bears Ears National Monument and the San Juan River. It retains historic stone pioneer buildings and is a popular base for outdoor recreation and Native American cultural tourism.
Visit: Bluff Historic District (historic site)
Navajo Nation, Arizona — the great canyon of the Navajo guides
Shefford rides deep into the Sagi with his Navajo companions, crossing this ancient canyon system as part of his grueling overland journey toward Fay's hidden prison. Grey renders the canyon with lyrical intensity — the red walls closing overhead, the cool green of cottonwoods along the wash, and the ruins of the Ancient Ones visible in the cliffsides. The Navajo guides who lead Shefford here are among the few people who know the secret trails through this labyrinth.
Tsegi Canyon, in what is now Navajo National Monument, contains some of the best-preserved Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings in the Southwest, including Betatakin and Keet Seel, occupied around 1250–1300 CE. The canyon has been Navajo homeland since at least the 17th century.
Navajo National Monument preserves the cliff dwellings of Betatakin and Keet Seel and is managed by the National Park Service. Ranger-led hikes to Betatakin and permit-based treks to Keet Seel are available seasonally.
Visit: Navajo National Monument (monument)
Kayenta, Arizona — the frontier supply hub
Shefford passes through Kayenta as one of the last places where he can obtain supplies, gather intelligence about the hidden canyon country, and make contact with traders and Navajo who know the remote trails. Grey portrays the trading post as a crossroads of cultures — Navajo, Mormon, and Anglo — where information is as valuable as flour and ammunition, and where the wrong word spoken too loudly could bring danger.
The Kayenta Trading Post was founded by John Wetherill and his wife Louisa in 1910. Wetherill was the guide who led the 1909 expedition to Rainbow Bridge and became a legendary figure in Navajo country, trusted by both the Navajo and Anglo explorers including Zane Grey himself.
Kayenta is a small Navajo Nation town of about 5,000 people that serves as the primary gateway community to Monument Valley. A Hampton Inn and several restaurants operate near the original trading post area, which has been redeveloped over the decades.
San Juan County, Utah — the sacred peak brooding over the plateau
Navajo Mountain looms over the entire landscape of the novel as a constant, brooding presence — a sacred dome that Shefford must orient himself by as he crosses the trackless plateau country. Grey imbues the mountain with spiritual weight, and Shefford comes to see it as both a guardian and a challenge. The Navajo characters treat it with reverence, and its flanks conceal the trails that lead to the hidden canyon where Fay is imprisoned.
Navajo Mountain, known to the Diné as Naatsis'áán or Head of Earth Woman, is one of the most sacred peaks in the Navajo cosmology. At 10,388 feet, it dominates the surrounding plateau and served as a landmark for both Native Americans and early explorers navigating the canyon country.
Navajo Mountain lies within the Navajo Nation and is not a public tourist destination, as it remains sacred to the Navajo people. The surrounding Navajo Mountain area is accessible via unpaved roads with tribal permission, and it is visible from Lake Powell and the Rainbow Bridge trail.
Near Bluff, Utah — the treacherous frontier river ford
Shefford must cross the San Juan River during his journey into the canyon country, and Grey renders the crossing as a moment of genuine physical danger — the river running red and fast with silt, the horses struggling, the far bank representing the true entry into the wild and lawless terrain beyond reach of conventional society. The river crossing marks a psychological threshold as much as a physical one: Shefford is leaving the world he knows behind.
The San Juan River was a formidable natural barrier in the settlement era of the Southwest. The Mormon pioneers who settled Bluff forded it regularly and established a ferry operation. The river drains approximately 24,000 square miles of the Colorado Plateau and was known for its unpredictable flash flooding.
The San Juan River near Bluff is now a popular multi-day rafting destination, known for its canyon scenery, petroglyphs, and access to remote Ancestral Puebloan sites. Sand Island Campground and a boat launch are managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
Visit: Sand Island Recreation Area (park)
Hidden plateau canyon, Utah — the polygamous fundamentalist enclave
This isolated village of fundamentalist Mormon women — married in secret ceremonies and hidden from federal marshals enforcing anti-polygamy laws — is the heart of the novel's central conflict. Fay Larkin lives here, brought as a beautiful captive bride. Shefford infiltrates the community and discovers the women's complex mixture of faith, resignation, and desperate longing for the outside world. The community's male enforcers make it clear that outsiders who find this place do not leave alive.
Following the 1890 Manifesto officially ending polygamy in the mainstream LDS Church, fundamentalist splinter groups retreated into the most remote canyon country of Utah and Arizona to continue the practice. Federal marshals actively pursued these communities through the early 20th century, driving them into extreme isolation.
The fictional village corresponds to the broader canyon country of the Navajo Mountain plateau, which remains extremely remote. Fundamentalist Mormon communities still exist in the region, most notably in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah, though these are distinct modern settlements.
San Juan & Kane Counties, Utah — the sublime drowned canyon
Shefford traverses portions of Glen Canyon during his journey, and Grey describes it with aching beauty — soaring orange walls, side canyons carved by ancient water, and a silence so profound it feels sacred. The canyon's sublime scale reduces Shefford's personal troubles to near nothing, and Grey uses it to underscore the themes of spiritual renewal and human insignificance before nature's grandeur that run throughout the novel.
Glen Canyon was one of the most beautiful and little-known canyons in the American Southwest when Grey explored it in the early 20th century. It was drowned by the construction of Glen Canyon Dam between 1956 and 1966, forming Lake Powell. David Brower later called the decision to flood it one of the great conservation failures of the century.
Lake Powell now fills Glen Canyon, managed as the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area by the National Park Service. Declining water levels due to drought have begun re-exposing portions of the original canyon walls and side canyons that were submerged for decades.
Visit: Glen Canyon National Recreation Area (park)
Near Monument Valley, Utah — Shefford's gateway contact
Shefford first establishes himself in the canyon country through a trading post like the one at Oljato, where sympathetic traders and their Navajo connections provide him with crucial knowledge of the trails, the local communities, and the hidden valley where Fay is kept. Grey portrays the trader as a weathered, morally ambiguous figure who has made peace with the lawlessness of the frontier, offering Shefford guidance while making clear the extreme danger of the mission.
Oljato Trading Post was established by John Wetherill in 1906 before he moved to Kayenta. It was one of the most remote trading posts in the Navajo Nation, serving the scattered families of the Monument Valley region and operating as an informal information hub in a vast, trackless country.
The Oljato area remains a small Navajo community. The original trading post building has survived in various states of repair and has been recognized as a historic structure, though it is on private Navajo land and not a public tourist facility.
Utah-Arizona border plateau — the deadly approach route
The trail across the Pahute Mesa is the route Shefford must navigate to approach the hidden canyon without triggering the community's vigilant, violent sentries. Grey describes a punishing landscape of slickrock, loose shale, and knife-edge ridges where a wrong step means death and where the enforcers of the sealed community patrol with rifles. Shefford navigates this route without a gun, relying instead on his wits, his Navajo allies, and a desperate courage born of love for Fay.
The Paiute Mesa and surrounding plateau country of the Utah-Arizona border region was among the last areas of the continental United States to be mapped and explored by non-Native Americans. The Paiute people inhabited these high plateaus for centuries before and after European contact.
The Paiute Mesa area lies within a remote stretch of the Navajo Nation and adjacent Bureau of Land Management land near the Arizona-Utah border. It is accessible only by high-clearance four-wheel-drive vehicles on unmarked tracks and sees very few visitors.
Marble Canyon, Arizona — the great river threshold
Lee's Ferry represents the outer boundary of the truly wild country Shefford must enter, a crossing point into the canyon plateau world where federal law holds little sway and where the fundamentalist communities have carved out their hidden lives. Grey uses the mighty Colorado — thundering and red with silt — as a symbolic divide between civilization and the raw frontier where Shefford's ordeal unfolds.
Lee's Ferry was established by John D. Lee in 1872 after he fled into the Arizona Strip following the Mountain Meadows Massacre. It was the only practical crossing of the Colorado River for hundreds of miles and served as a vital link between Utah and Arizona until Navajo Bridge was completed in 1929.
Lee's Ferry is now a major launch point for Grand Canyon river trips and is managed as part of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. A historic district preserves the original ferry buildings, and the site offers fishing, camping, and spectacular views of the Vermilion Cliffs.
Visit: Lee's Ferry Historic District (historic site)
More by Zane Grey: All Zane Grey books