A variety of Navajo rugs/T. Joe

One of the most interesting National Park System sites in the Southwest is Hubbell Trading Post National Monument in northern Arizona.

It dates to 1878, when John Lorenzo Hubbell became the most successful trader in the region. A Spanish interpreter for the U.S. Army, “Don” Hubbell was a gifted polyglot. When he became a trader like his father before him, he took care to learn Diné. By speaking the Navajo language, he earned their trust and came to appreciate their rug weaving and silversmithing traditions.

He founded the trading post in Ganado that his family ran for nearly 90 years before selling it to the National Park Service along with the rest of the Hubbell homestead site. The site includes Hubbell Hill, the family cemetery where he, his wife, and three of their children are buried.

More than just a historic site intended to capture a moment in Western history, when Hubbell Trading Post Historic Site was justified to Congress it was done so with the clear intent that the days of Indian traders would not merely be preserved behind glass but maintained on a daily trading business.

In 1966 when he appeared before a congressional committee to answer questions about Hubbell Trading Post, then-Park Service Director George Hartzog told the congressmen that he envisioned a traditional operation, not one governed by present-day business methods. Indeed, at one point in a meeting with Bob Utley, the Park Service's regional historian at the time, Hartzog made it abundantly clear that he didn't want the trading post turned into a museum, according to the Park Service's administrative history of the site, written in 1993.

"Hartzog erupted vehemently that he would not countenance another god-damned dead embalmed historic site, that it must be a living trading post," Utley recalled to the history's authors, Albert and Ann Manchester.

The items you find in the trading post today — Navajo rugs, exquisite jewelry with much silver and turquoise — are crafted by Native American artisans and purchased by the Indian trader at Hubbell to be sold to the public.

Now Hubbell Trading Post National Monument staff are taking their rugs and jewelry to Petroglyph National Monument in New Mexico for first time since 2017.

Visitors will experience the culture and heritage of the Navajo people with hundreds of handcrafted Navajo rugs and jewelry straight from Hubbell Trading Post, a Western National Parks Association (WNPA) partner park. Western National Parks Association also is an official non-profit partner of the National Park Service dedicated to supporting the educational mission of Petroglyph National Monument. 

The event will take place on Saturday, July 13, and Sunday, July 14, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day at the Information Center, outside on the patio.

You can join Navajo trader Wallace James Jr. at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. daily for rug talks, and enjoy weaving demonstrations from weaver Tonita Yazzie. At this event, visitors also can shop hundreds of Navajo rugs and fine silver and turquoise jewelry from the oldest continuously operating trading post in the American Southwest.

Petroglyph National Monument protects one of the largest petroglyph sites in North America. The park provides opportunities for people to connect with and enjoy a diversity of cultural and natural resources, striking scenery, wildlife habitats, and remnants of a volcanic landscape.