An Enchanted Highway

  There is a highway, a very busy highway, that comes into Gallup from the north. In town, it is called North Munoz Drive, but it is part of U.S. Highway 491. It is a very busy and congested street in town and, outside of town, it is a busy highway. The New Mexico Department of Transportation is currently in the process of making it a 4 lane, divided highway for the 93 mile distance between Gallup and Shiprock. North of Shiprock, the highway is still fairly busy, but it is not nearly as busy as the Gallup to Shiprock stretch. North of Shiprock, U.S. Highway 491 goes across the southwest corner of Colorado and then it angles to the northwest and enters Utah, ending in the town of Monticello. The entire highway is 193 miles long. From Gallup to the Colorado border, this highway goes through the eastern part of the Navajo Indian Reservation. At the state border, it leaves the Navajo Reservation and enters the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation. It leaves the Ute Mountain Reservation about eight miles south of Cortez, Colorado.
  It starts out as a desert road, but then north of Cortez, it begins to climb up out of the desert and into grassy pinon and juniper country.
  The highway drops from 6,515 feet above sea level at Gallup to  4,912 feet at Shiprock and then climbs back up to 6,201 feet at Cortez and ends at a lofty 7,050 feet above sea level in Monticello, Utah.
  Twelve miles west of the town of Shiprock is the rock formation called Shiprock, called Tse Bit'A'I in Navajo. This Navajo name means "rock with wings." It is one of  four sacred peaks to the Navajo tribe.
  I will have more to say about Shiprock, the rock formation, after I talk about the history of highway 491, which was renumbered in 2003 because its previous number made it one of the most infamous and feared highways in the country.