Mount Taylor, a dormant stratovolcano in northwestern New Mexico, rises above the desert as the highest summit in Cibola National Forest and the central feature of a larger volcanic field formed mostly between about 4.3 and 1.5 million years ago. Sacred to the Navajo, Acoma, Laguna, Zuni, and Hopi, it is especially significant in Navajo belief as the southern of the four sacred mountains. Renamed for Zachary Taylor in 1849, it also preserves older Spanish and Indigenous associations. Erosion has strongly shaped the mountain, and its surroundings later became a major uranium-mining district, spurring modern efforts to protect this culturally and environmentally important landscape.