Hubbell Trading Post

The trading post you are passing has been open for business for about a hundred and fifty years, making it the oldest continuously operated trading post on the Navajo Nation. John Lorenzo Hubbell bought it in eighteen seventy-eight, just a decade after the Navajo people were allowed to return to this valley from their forced exile at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico.

Hubbell ran more than a store. He served as a bank where Navajo families could pawn silver and turquoise, and a post office. He also influenced the weaving designs that reached buyers in the east. The National Park Service took over in nineteen sixty-seven, and the trading room still sells Navajo rugs over the same wooden counter.