Hubbell Trading Post
National Historic Site
Hubbell Farming and Freighting
Seventy-five years ago, the ring of the blacksmith's hammer competed with the sounds of snorting horses, jangling trace chains, creaking leather and the voices of men conversing in English, Navajo and Spanish as they went about the chore of hitching fresh teams to freight wagons.
Today, only the barn and its battered contents suggest the frenzy of activity that once took place here. The names and brands carved and burned into the wooden doors are the only evidence of the men who once labored here. The blacksmith shop stands empty, the forge long cold. The only occupants are National Park Service horses living out their years in retirement.
In 1897, J.L. Hubbell needed a barn at his Ganado trading post to stable the horses and mules used for his freighting business. When the barn was finished sometime before 1900, it was the largest one in northeast Arizona. Its walls are made of sandstone blocks that came from a quarry two miles away from the trading post. The ceiling and roof are constructed of timbers with smaller poles laid at right angles covered with bark and earth. Ponderosa pine, cut on the Defiance Plateau fifteen miles east of Ganado, was used for the large beams and supports. The barn contains stalls for twenty mules and horses, a hay loft, a workshop and a blacksmith shop.
With the source of goods so far away, a trader ordinarily shipped his own freight. As J.L. Hubbell's trading business expanded, so did his freight- line. Coffee, flour, sugar and other trade goods were freighted year around to Ganado and from there on to his other trading posts. Raw wool purchased from his Navajo customers was bagged and loaded into wagons for the trip into Gallup where it was sold. Records show that in good years Hubbell shipped 100,000 pounds of wool to market. Along with wool, pinon nuts, corn and pelts made up much of the load for the return trip to Gallup.
Along with his own goods Hubbell often had contracts to ship material for government projects on the reservation. He also contracted to ship goods and Indian-issue implements to outlying Indian Bureau agencies. In addition, at one time, he had five separate contracts for mail delivery.
In 1910, he added a livery service, hiring out saddle horses, buckboards and freight wagons to survey crews, engineers and tourists that traveled across the reservation.
By 1925, trucks had replaced most of the freight wagons. Only a few wagons remained to haul goods to his more remote trading posts. HORSES AND MULES When Hubbell began freighting in 1876, he used oxen to pull his freight wagons. By 1890, the oxen were replaced with faster horses and mules. Hubbell knew that good mules and horses were important to any freighting business and by 1916, he had over $2,500 invested in forty-five of them. Twenty of these animals would be stabled in the barn and the rest grazed around the trading post. One of the employees of the trading post would be responsible for managing the barn, feeding and caring for the stock.
In the early years, forage for the wagon teams was easy to find growing alongside the roads. As the Navajo prospered and acquired more livestock, less grass was available to feed freight animals. Hubbell had no choice but to haul feed in his wagons along with the freight goods.
In 1902, to save feed costs, he leveled 110 acres of his Ganado homestead to grow hay. With men hired from the local community, Hubbell built an irrigation system that ran from a diversion dam at Ganado Lake to a holding pond near his fields, a distance of over two miles.
The alfalfa hay that was grown on these fields was used to feed his freight stock, any surplus hay was sold commercially.
Hubbell hired locals to cut, rake and stack the two or three cuttings that came off the fields each year. The loose hay was stacked by hand in the yard behind the barn, baled in the hay press in the fall and then stacked in the barn's loft.
After J.L. Hubbell died in 1930, the farm was continued more out of tradition than as a money-making venture.
Jose Borrega, with his immense, black mustache worked as a blacksmith for the Hubbell family for many years. Borrega and his Navajo assistants did not engage in fancy blacksmithing, but concentrated on wagon and farm equipment repairs and shoeing horses. Shoeing was a full-time job, as the horses and mules had to be re-shod every eight weeks. After World War II, most blacksmithing activity ceased and the forge was leased out to auto mechanics as a garage.
Superintendent
Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site
P.O. Box 150
Ganado AZ 86505
(928) 755- 3475
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Last Updated October 26, 2001.