Farmington, New Mexico in the context of "Four Corners"

La Plata River (Navajo: Tsé Dogoi Ńlíní) is a 70-mile-long (110 km) tributary to the San Juan River in La Plata County, Colorado, and San Juan County, New Mexico, in the United States. This small river heads at the western foot of Snow Storm Peak in the La Plata Mountains of southwestern Colorado, approximately 35 miles (56 km) north of the New Mexico state line. It flows in a southerly direction until it joins the San Juan at the western edge of the city of Farmington, New Mexico, about 19 miles (31 km) south of the Colorado state line.

The Navajo name for the river, Tsé Dogoi Nlini translates as "flowing over projecting rock".

Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a United States National Historical Park in the American Southwest hosting a large concentration of pre-Columbian indigenous ruins of pueblos. The park is located in northwestern New Mexico, between Albuquerque and Farmington, in a remote canyon cut by the Chaco Wash. Containing the most sweeping collection of ancient ruins north of Mexico, the park preserves one of the most important cultural and historical areas in the United States.

Between AD 900 and 1150, Chaco Canyon was a major cultural center for the Ancestral Puebloans. Chacoans quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling fifteen major complexes that remained the largest buildings ever built in North America until the 19th century. Evidence of archaeoastronomy at Chaco has been proposed, with the "Sun Dagger" petroglyph at Fajada Butte a popular example. Many Chacoan buildings may have been aligned to capture the solar and lunar cycles, requiring generations of astronomical observations and centuries of skillfully coordinated construction. Climate change is thought to have led to the emigration of Chacoans and the eventual abandonment of the canyon, beginning with a fifty-year drought commencing in 1130.

San Juan County (Spanish: Condado de San Juan) is a county located in the U.S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2020 census, its population was 121,661 making it the fifth-most populous county in New Mexico. Its county seat is Aztec. The county was created in 1887.

San Juan County is part of the Farmington, New Mexico, metropolitan statistical area. It is in the state's northwest corner and includes the New Mexico portion of the Four Corners.