Navajo County, AZ

Settlement & growth (pre-1960)

Human history in Navajo County begins with the Ancestral Puebloans, who inhabited the region from roughly 500 to 1300 AD, leaving behind cliff dwellings at sites like Betatakin and Keet Seel in what is now the Navajo National Monument. By the time of European contact, the area was home to the Navajo (Diné) and Hopi peoples, who had established settled agricultural communities. The Hopi villages on the three mesas—including First Mesa, Second Mesa, and Third Mesa—are among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in North America, dating back over a thousand years. The Navajo, who arrived later (circa 1400-1500 AD), became the dominant group, with a semi-nomadic pastoral economy centered on sheep herding.

Spanish exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries left little permanent mark on Navajo County, as the area was too remote and arid for mission or presidio settlement. The region remained under Spanish and then Mexican control until 1848, when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded it to the United States. The first significant Anglo-American incursion came with the 1864 Long Walk, when the U.S. Army forcibly removed the Navajo to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico. After their return in 1868, the Navajo Reservation was established, and the tribe began rebuilding. The Hopi Reservation was created by executive order in 1882, carving out a smaller enclave within the larger Navajo territory.

Anglo settlement in Navajo County was sparse and late, driven not by homesteading but by extractive industries. The railroad arrived in the 1880s, with the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad (later the Santa Fe) building a line through the southern part of the county. This spurred the founding of Holbrook in 1881 as a railroad and ranching center. Holbrook became the county seat in 1895 and remains the largest Anglo-majority town, with a population of about 5,000. Ranching dominated the economy through the early 20th century, with cattle and sheep operations spreading across the open range. The town of Snowflake, founded in 1878 by Mormon settlers from Utah, became a distinct Latter-day Saint enclave, while Taylor, just south of Snowflake, was settled by Mormon families in the 1880s. These communities remain predominantly white and Mormon today.

The discovery of coal in the Black Mesa region in the 1920s and the construction of the Navajo Generating Station near Page in the 1960s brought a new wave of workers—engineers, miners, and construction laborers—many of whom were white and from other parts of the Southwest. Page itself was founded in 1957 as a housing camp for workers building the Glen Canyon Dam, and it grew rapidly as a service hub for the dam and later for tourism at Lake Powell. By 1960, the county's population had reached about 37,000, with roughly equal numbers of Native Americans and whites, and a tiny Hispanic minority.

Modern era (post-1965)

The 1965 Hart-Cellar Act had minimal direct impact on Navajo County, as the region's foreign-born population remains at just 1.0%—far below the national average. Instead, the major demographic shifts since 1965 have been driven by internal migration and natural increase. The Native American population has grown substantially through high birth rates, rising from about 40% of the county in 1970 to 42.6% today. The Navajo Nation's population within the county is concentrated in communities like Kayenta, Chinle, and Tuba City (the latter partially in Coconino County), while the Hopi Reservation's population centers on the villages of Kykotsmovi and Polacca.

The white population, while still the largest single group at 42.4%, has grown more slowly, as the ranching and mining economies have stagnated. The closure of the Navajo Generating Station in 2019 and the decline of coal mining on Black Mesa have led to job losses and out-migration from towns like Page and Holbrook. The Hispanic population has increased from about 5% in 1990 to 10.6% today, driven by migration from Mexico and other parts of the Southwest for work in construction, hospitality, and agriculture. Hispanic residents are most concentrated in Holbrook and Page, where they form visible communities. The Black population remains tiny at 1.1%, and East/Southeast Asian communities are negligible at 0.4%, with no significant Indian subcontinent population.

Suburbanization has been limited in Navajo County due to its rural character and the vast landholdings of the Navajo and Hopi tribes. The only area that has seen suburban-style growth is the Show Low region in the county's far south, which has attracted retirees and second-home buyers from Phoenix and Tucson. Show Low, along with Pinetop-Lakeside, has become a white-majority recreational and retirement destination, with a growing Hispanic service workforce. However, these towns are small (Show Low's population is about 11,000) and do not fundamentally alter the county's demographic structure.