Qualla: Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site: Introduction

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dan Kunz from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. At the top of a cone-shaped hill northwest of the trading post, John Lorenzo Hubbell and a Navajo herdsman named Many Horses lie buried side by side. They were friends for decades, separated by culture and language but united by something harder to name -- a mutual respect forged over countless transactions of wool, silver, and turquoise. That friendship, and the commerce that sustained it, still echoes through the sandstone walls of Hubbell Trading Post in Ganado, Arizona. Established around 1878 and operating continuously ever since, this is the oldest trading post on the Navajo Nation, a place where two cultures met and, remarkably, kept meeting for nearly 150 years.

Image: Dan Kunz from London, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site: After the Long Walk

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fred E. Mang, Jr., Public domain. When the Navajos returned from the Long Walk in 1868, they came home to devastation. Their herds had been decimated, their fields destroyed. The Treaty of 1868 allowed survivors to leave the Bosque Redondo internment camp and return to a portion of their ancestral homeland -- rou...

Image: Fred E. Mang, Jr. | Public domain

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site: The Trader of Ganado

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY 2.5. John Lorenzo Hubbell arrived in the Ganado Valley in 1876, less than a decade after the Long Walk. He was twenty-three years old, trilingual in English, Spanish, and Navajo, the son of an Anglo father and a Hispanic mother raised in the village of Pajarito just south of Albuquerq...

Image: CC BY 2.5

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site: Sandstone, Pine, and Cornstalks

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original uploader was Averette at en.wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. Heavy sandstones quarried from the surrounding area in 1883 formed the walls of the trading post's main building, set along the southern banks of the Pueblo Colorado Wash. Construction of the barn began in 1897 and was completed in 1900 by local builders who fashioned roofs in th...

Image: Original uploader was Averette at en.wikipedia | CC BY 3.0

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site: Where Water Drew People

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. The Pueblo Colorado Wash courses along the northern boundary of the Hubbell settlement, and in sections of the Ganado-Cornfields valley it runs year-round, fed by springs. In the arid Southwest, dependable water has always been a magnet for settlement. Ancestral Puebloans built v...

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain

Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site: Still Trading

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jsweida, CC BY-SA 3.0. Hubbell maintained friendships with many of his Navajo customers until his death in 1930. His son Roman then ran the business until his own death in 1957, after which Roman's wife Dorothy managed the post for another decade. In 1967, the family sold the property to the National P...

Image: Jsweida | CC BY-SA 3.0