Phoenix ? It’s a million-acre park system that’s been around for nearly half a century and is home to some of the world’s most spectacular scenery.

Yet it appears many people even some native Arizonans are unaware that Navajo tribal parks exist.

Highway 163 snakes through Monument Valley, Ariz. Navajo Nation officials are working on a plan to update many of its eight tribal parks to draw more tourists visiting northern Arizona.

“The parks are not very well known and are undervisited,” says Brad Ack, program director for the Flagstaff-based Grand Canyon Trust, a conservation group.

Now, Navajo Nation officials are working on a plan to update many of its eight tribal parks and make them must-see destinations for tourists visiting northern Arizona.

Officials with the Navajo Nation Parks and Recreation Department in March met with staff from the Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Trust to discuss ways to free the Navajo park system from a hand-to-mouth existence.

The parks have been surviving mostly because of entrance fees that have been used to support salaries, provide interpretive services and tours, and maintain facilities.

Most of the parks are lacking facilities such as rest rooms and visitors’ centers.

“We’re taking a serious look at the future of the parks,” says Navajo parks spokeswoman Deana Jackson. “We’re hoping to showcase our culture and our land base and we’re looking at a long-term, realistic plan. We see a critical need for the redevelopment of the parks and the services that we offer … but we realize it can’t be done overnight.”

The Navajo parks operate on about a $2.6 million annual budget from entrance fees and backcountry permits plus another $500,000 a year in general tribal funds.

By comparison, Grand Canyon National Park operates on a budget more than six times that of the Navajo Nation parks, which has only 100 seasonal staffers and 40 year-round employees.

It’s estimated the tribal park system may need up to an $8 million infusion of money.

	www.navajonationparks.org/ www.grandcanyontrust.org/

“The first of the goals is infrastructure development, like water and sewers at some of the parks,” Jackson says. “A tourist center at the Antelope Canyon site is one of our ultimate goals for 2004 and possibly an RV park at Monument Valley.”

She says the tribe is hoping to get more government funding for the project and to take advantage of a relatively new federal program that allows selected parks to keep most of their entrance fees.

Ack says the tribe is interested in implementing similar land management and facilities development strategies that have turned the Grand Canyon into one of the nation’s most lucrative attractions with about 4.5 million annual visitors.

Navajo officials especially would most like to see Monument Valley become a prime tourist destination.

Straddling the Arizona-Utah state line, Monument Valley became the first Navajo Tribal Park on July 11, 1958.

More than 400,000 tourists visit the park each year to soak up the wonder of monolithic mesas that range in height from 400 feet to 1,000 feet and gaze at more than 100 Anasazi ruins.

Famed Hollywood movie director John Ford used Monument Valley as a backdrop for four of his Westerns three of which starred John Wayne.

The other tribal parks are Bowl Canyon Navajo Recreation Area, Four Corners Monument, Little Colorado Gorge Outlook, Navajo Nation Zoo and Botanical Park, Window Rock Sports Center, and Veteran’s Memorial Park-Window Rock.

“When you’re leaving the Grand Canyon toward the east at Cameron, you pass right by one of the parks the Little Colorado Gorge which is a spectacular place. But it has very little visitation even though it’s next door to the canyon,” Ack says