John Hubbell

John Lorenzo Hubbell was born in New Mexico Territory to an American Father and a Mexican mother. He did not learn to speak English until age 12. After clerking in an Albuquerque post office and a Mormon trading post in Utah, he made his way to Arizona in the summer of 1873.


By 1876 he owned his own trading post, and in 1878 he acquired a second. This second trading post was the location of his homestead as well as the place Hubbell called home for the next fifty years.


In the late 1870s and early 1880s, Hubbell greatly expanded his trading empire by establishing posts throughout the Navajo lands. In 1882, he was elected sheriff of Apache County. He later served as a member of the first Arizona state legislature, ran unsuccessfully for the United States Senate, and published his memoirs, entitled Fifty Years an Indian Trader. Hubbell met every American president from Grover Cleveland to Warren G. Harding. He hosted Theodore Roosevelt in his home for a week in 1912 during Roosevelt's trip through the southwest. Hubbell's success as a trader was due in part to his knowledge and respect for Navajo culture; his fairness and honesty in all business dealings; his cordial relationships with various Navajo authorities; and his sense of responsibility to the Navajo community. Late in his life, the Navajo called him "Naakaii Saani" (" Old Mexican") out of respect for his long relationship with them. When Hubbell died in 1930, his two sons succeeded him in his trading business. The site of his trading post at Gando, Arizona became Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site in 1967.