The boundaries of the Hopi reservations are not continuous in this region and because they are located inside the Navajo Reservation, this creates a very interesting effect on the time zones.īasically, there is a 100 mile stretch along Highway 264 that will take you through six time zone changes during the summer because of the odd boundaries and time zones! This highway branches off from 169 near Tuba City and runs through the Navajo and Hopi reservations. One of the biggest quirks of Arizona’s time zones can be found along Highway 264. That could be helpful for some but for those who are factoring in the time differences between MST and MDT, it could throw them off! So even if your tour is technically at 11 AM local time, they will schedule it at 10 AM MST. To make things easier for tourists, some of the tour operators schedule the time of the tours based on MST. You might have a tour scheduled at 10 AM and when you arrive you may find out that it’s actually 11 AM on the reservation and be really confused. That’s because a lot of tours in the stunning slot canyons and other places take place on the Navajo Nation.

This can be really important for travelers to know. This means that in the summer, the Navajo Nation will be one hour ahead of the rest of Arizona. The Navajo Nation observes daylight savings time but the Hopi reservation does not. Map via BLM.īut here is where things get interesting. It’s actually the largest reservation in the US and home to over 300,000 people. It’s a vast area that is located just east of Flagstaff and Page and that occupies the entire corner of the state, while also making up a portion of southern Utah and western New Mexico. In the northeast region of Arizona you can find the Navajo and Hopi reservations. So that might be relatively straightforward but it does get a little bit more confusing because one of the reservations located in Arizona does acknowledge daylight savings time. Summer = visiting California beaches on Pacific ocean (Pacific time).Winter = visiting snowy mountains (mountain time).If you need an easy way to remember this think: So effectively Arizona (MST) gets on Pacific time with states like California. The result is that all of the mountain states mentioned above become one hour ahead of Arizona. Therefore the time rebels in Arizona do not change their clocks. However, whenever daylight savings time takes place, Arizona does not convert to mountain daylight time (MDT) and remains on MST. This is basically how it works in simple terms.ĭuring the winter (from early November to mid March), Arizona will be on mountain standard time (MST) which means that it will have the same time zone as neighboring states like New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, etc. It does not acknowledge daylight savings time which creates some oddities and confusion for outsiders. Why doesn’t Arizona acknowledge daylight savings time?Īrizona remains in mountain standard time (MST) throughout the entire year.

Arizona time zone pacific