Seven Posts in Thirty-Five Miles: The Trading Economy of the San Juan
Near Bluff, Utah
Along a thirty-five-mile stretch of the San Juan River running through the canyon country of southeastern Utah, there were at one time several trading posts operating at the same time. This was in the eighteen eighties, when Bluff was the only non-Native settlement of any size in the region, and the trading posts were the economic infrastructure that linked the Navajo and Ute peoples of the canyon country to the manufactured goods of the wider world. Navajo families brought in woven wool, blankets, rugs, and silver jewelry.
Ute families brought in animal hides and other goods. In exchange they received flour, coffee, calico cloth, metal tools, and sometimes credit. The credit system kept families dependent on their nearest post, which was by design.
By the mid-eighteen nineties, competition and the difficulty of supplying such remote outposts had sharply reduced the number of posts. In the early twentieth century, John and Louisa Wetherill ran a trading post at Oljato, just across the Utah and Arizona line, from nineteen oh six to nineteen ten. The Wetherills were unusual traders: their work gave them access to and genuine respect from the Navajo community, and they were among the earliest non-Navajo people to document Monument Valley and the surrounding canyon country.
When they moved on to Kayenta, the post passed to others but the pattern of trade it represented continued. Bluff's own post served as an anchor for the regional economy, a supply point for traders heading deeper into the canyon country. The trading post era shaped the settlements, the roads, and the economic relationships of this corner of Utah in ways that outlasted the posts themselves.
