The Mexican Hat rock formation is the defining landmark of this stretch of the San Juan River. Just north of the town, a flat sandstone slab roughly 60 feet across balances on a tapered pedestal, the product of millions of years of wind and water erosion that removed the softer rock while leaving the harder capstone in place. It is visible from the highway and easy to reach on foot.
The rock sits in the broader context of the Navajo Nation's spectacular canyon country — red mesas, striped buttes, and the wide sky that Ed Abbey wrote about in Desert Solitaire. It makes a natural focal point for photographs, but the real spectacle is the landscape that surrounds it: in every direction there is some geological improbability demanding attention.