Tourists turn sacred ‘Chocolate Falls’ into trash waterfall. It’s closed to visitors
Tourists trashed a culturally sacred site at Grand Falls in Arizona, so land stewards have closed it to visitors.
The waterfall system is also known as “Chocolate Falls” due to its distinctive muddy waters that flow from the Little Colorado River near Flagstaff. The sacred site is “located within the sovereign Navajo Nation tribal reservation ... within the boundary of the Navajo National Leupp Chapter,” according to a Feb. 25 public notice.
The chapter decided to close the sacred site to visitors due to “an overwhelming increase in tourism affecting residents, livestock, land, sacred sites, and water that are crucial to the indigenous herbal plants and animals, both wild and domestic, who unilaterally utilize the ecosystem,” the notice says.
The sacred site posted the notice to its Facebook page on Feb. 28.
“The heightened popularity of Adah’iilíní (Grand Falls) has resulted in an accumulation of overflowing trash, alcohol containers (Navajo Nation law prohibits alcohol), ATV groups off-roading into residential areas and non-designated roads, high tourism, deterioration of road maintenance, and disturbance of the natural ecosystem, its inhabitants, and cultural sites,” officials said in the post.
The Adah’iilíní community also said it is “acutely cognizant of the spiritual livelihood of Diné (Navajo) people and neighboring tribes whom also reside along the Little Colorado River from its tributaries to the Grand Canyon Confluence,” the post says. “Adah’iilíní (Grand Falls) is a sacred location to Diné (Navajo) People and tribes of the Southwest.”
Residents commiserated in the comments that tourists had chased their livestock with ATVs.
“I cried the last time I went home,” someone wrote. “They have zero respect for the environment or the families in the area. They chase down livestock on their 4wheelers. ... I had to yell at some people for doing that the last time I went home.”
Radmilla Cody, a former Miss Navajo and a model, singer and activist who grew up in Grand Falls, replied, saying that was “one of many reasons for the closure.”
“That’s why the community is stepping up now to protect and preserve Adah’iilíní,” she said, and encouraged residents to join activists at the falls on Saturday, March 4. “We’ll answer questions relatives may have and are open to ideas. We can also use all the helping hands that we can get to keep the area safe from further desecration.”
Cody thanked the resident with the Navajo word “ahe’hee’.”
