Guiding tourists in Monument Valley

Harold Simpson runs Simpson's Trailhandler Tours, which brings thousands of mostly foreign visitors into the park on guided cultural expeditions. On each, he explains how one relative, whom he calls "Mr. Gray Whiskers," helped designate the tribal park in 1958.

Harold Simpson runs Simpson’s Trailhandler Tours, which brings thousands of mostly foreign visitors into the park on guided cultural expeditions. On each, he explains how one relative, whom he calls “Mr. Gray Whiskers,” helped designate the tribal park in 1958.   (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

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Harold Simpson, owner of a Navajo tour company, appreciates the quiet of the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, but he also sees opportunity in its beauty.

Monument Valley

A rider walks his horse along John Ford’s Point beneath the Three Sisters in Monument Valley on the Arizona-Utah border.   (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Monument Valley

Tourists take pictures on John Ford’s Point beneath the Three Sisters in Monument Valley.   (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Monument Valley

A bus stops so tourists can take in the view of Monument Valley. Some Navajo elders say the remote 130-square-mile spread is being exploited by those in the tourism industry.  (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Monument Valley

“I know it was every boy’s fantasy, but we just knew it as our backyard,” Harold Simpson says of growing up with his brothers in the Monument Valley on the Arizona-Utah border. “We were out in the wilderness, climbing rocks, herding sheep, running cattle.”  (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)