The tower at Navajo Point was commissioned by the Fred Harvey Company. Colter first spent six months traveling around abandoned Pueblo settlements, mainly Hovenweep and Mesa Verde, and took from them a pair that often stands together there: a watchtower and a kiva, a round chamber for ceremonies.
Colter sculpted the tower in clay on a model of the terrain and photographed it from different angles. Then a wooden tower the height of the future one, 21 meters, was knocked together on the site itself to check the view from the top. In an old photograph, Hopi people are dancing in front of the kiva, and the spectators stand right on its roof.
