The Dunn Family and Navajo Mountain Trading Post

The Dunn Family and Navajo Mountain Trading Post

By JAMES H. KNIPMEYER

Far down in the southwestern corner of San Juan County, Utah, is the blue-black bulk of Navajo Mountain. Geographically, it is tucked into the angle made by the Colorado River and the Arizona state line. Indeed, the extreme southern slopes of the peak sit astride the boundary. The mountain is a laccolith of fairly regular outline. From a distance it appears as a symmetrical mound rising some four thousand feet above the relatively flat plain of the surrounding plateau, "an island in the midst of a sea of waterworn and wind-worn, brilliantly colored sandstone." 1

At an elevation of 10,416 feet, the mountain is the highest point in the Navajo country and may be seen from a distance of more than one hundred miles. It has long been a prominent landmark in the Southwest and is a commanding feature of that part of the region known as the Rainbow Plateau. Writing in 1916, geologist Herbert E. Gregory described this isolated area as "the most inaccessible, least known, and roughest portion of the Navajo Indian Reservation." Some seventy-eight years later, fellow geologist Donald L. Baars was still able to state that "this remains perhaps the most remote and little-known region in the conterminous United States today." 2

The plateau surrounding the mountain is covered with juniper and pinyon, sagebrush, and other low browse, but the mountain itself is cloaked with pine, fir, spruce, and aspen. Seen from a distance, this cover suggested the name Tucane—"black peak"—to the Paiute Indians. The earliest written record of Navajo Mountain by Europeans was its designation as Sierra Azul on the 1745 map of Father Juan Miguel Menchero. The early Spanish explorers, then, saw it as the "blue mountain." In the first half of the 1800s, Mexicans referred to it as Sierra Panoche, which is a Spanish term for a lump of unprocessed brown sugar. 3

Mormon missionaries traveling from the Utah settlements to the Hopi villages in northern Arizona in the 1850s and 1860s called it Mount Spaneshanks, after a Navajo headman by that name who lived some miles south of the mountain.4 When Major John Wesley Powell made his historic voyage down the canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers in 1869, he wanted to name the peak Mt. Seneca Howland after a member of his expedition. But as he completed his map of the region in 1872, topographer Almon H. Thompson convinced Powell to give it the name Navajo Mountain for the Indian country in which it is so conspicuous a landmark. 5

The first human residents of the Navajo Mountain area were prehistoric peoples. Some of these, the Puebloan Anasazi, built dwellings and other structures on the plateaus and mesa tops and in the canyons; today, ruins remain to mark their culture. By the early 1800s, some Navajos and members of the San Juan band of Paiutes were herding livestock in the general area, but it was the Kit Carson military campaign of 1863-64 that stimulated migrations of Navajos from the east into the remote areas near Navajo Mountain. It was this influx of refugees that gave the peak its Navajo name of Naat'sis'aan, meaning "hiding place from the enemies."

The Navajo Mountain area was explored by American prospectors in the 1880s and early 1890s, but they were decidedly unwelcome among the native population, and white, or Anglo, visitation was scarce. Neil M. Judd, writing of an archaeological trip to the region in 1909, stated, "Incredible as it may appear, we were the first white men ever seen by Navahos in their mid-twenties," who were attending an Indian gathering just to the southeast of the mountain. As late as 1994, geologist Donald Baars said, "Even now, those Navajos living in this isolated corner of the reservation are less Americanized and maintain more primitive living habits than their cousins to the east." 6

It was to this remote region that Ben Wetherill, his wife, and two small children came in the early spring of 1928. They located at the eastern foot of Navajo Mountain, just within the Utah state line at what the Indians called Teas-ya-toh, "Water under the Cottonwoods."7 Here Wetherill built a small stone building to serve as a store, the beginning of what would later become Navajo Mountain Trading Post. During the three years that Wetherill had the store, it was usually referred to as Cottonwood Spring.

For the first three months the family lived in a tent, later moving into a back room of the store. By the end of the summer they had begun construction of a house from the roughly quarried rock of a nearby cliff. The Wetherills were sixty-five miles from a post office at Tonalea, Arizona, more than one hundred miles from a telephone or doctor at Tuba City, Arizona, and almost two hundred miles from such evidences of civilization as railroads, hotels, and drug stores at Flagstaff. This was, until it ceased operation, the most remote trading post on the Navajo Reservation. For three years Ben Wetherill operated only during the spring, summer, and fall months, taking his family to Kayenta, Arizona, for the winter season. The entire operation was a struggle, and by the end of 1930 he could no longer handle the financing for the post. The family left the store and still-unfinished house, which stood empty for the next eighteen months. 8

Late in 1931 a man named Ray Dunn, then living in Williams, Arizona, heard that the post was for sale. He wrote to Ben Wetherill that fall, and the next spring the two of them went to the store site to look things over. The deal was made, and thus began the Dunn family's connection with Navajo Mountain Trading Post, a connection that was to continue, with only one interruption, for nearly half a century.9

Though he was operating a Shell Oil Company service station on Route 66 at the time, Raymond C. Dunn was no stranger to Indian affairs or to the Navajo Reservation. He was born on January 2, 1895, in Sedgewick County, Kansas, near Wichita. His father, Willis C. Dunn, had earlier been the U.S. government agent at the Red Moon Agency in western Oklahoma near Elk City. In 1912 Ray married Ethel P. Tourtillott, who was one-fourth Menominee Indian from Wisconsin and who worked for the U.S. Indian Service.10 After their marriage they homesteaded what the family always referred to as the "claim," a 360-acre farm in the southeastern corner of Colorado. There they raised "broomcorn" and had a cow and a few chickens. Ethel also sold eggs and cream in the nearby town of Campo. It was here that the couple's first two children were born, Madeline on September 17, 1913, and Harry DeRoy ("Roy") on December 1, 1915. At age eight, Madeline changed the spelling of her name. It was supposed to be pronounced as if the "i" were an "e," but most people pronounced the name wrong. So she took it upon herself to change the spelling to "Madelene."

Making an adequate living at the "claim" was difficult at best, and as the two children got older Ray began to cast about for better prospects. In 1920 he joined the U.S. Indian Service. His father had been in the Indian Service, and the work provided a steady income. Ray was sent to Fort Defiance on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. In his job there as a stockman, or range-rider, he helped the Navajos with problems related to the soil and the raising of sheep and cattle. For four years Ray worked at various locations on the reservation: Fort Defiance, Lukachukai, Chinle, and Chilchinbito. For a brief time in 1924 the family moved back to farm in Colorado. Some of these moves were made in order for Madelene and Roy to attend public schools instead of the Indian schools.11 In 1925 the Dunns returned to the This time, Ray worked at the trading post at Rock Point. Two years later, they made another move to a trading post at Chambers, Arizona, so that Madelene could attend high school at Sanders, some eight miles away.

Financial considerations temporarily forced Ray out of the trading post business, however. In 1928 the family moved to Williams, where Ray not only ran the Shell station but was also the bulk dealer for Shell. The Williams years were busy ones for the Dunns. A new daughter, Harriett, was born to Ray and Ethel in 1929, and Madelene married John W. "Jack" Owen in 1931. So it was an extended family that made the move to Navajo Mountain in the spring of 1932. Ray, Jack, and Madelene arrived at their new home on April 11, with Ethel, Roy, and two-year-old Harriett following at the end of May; they had stayed at Williams until the end of Roy's school year.

When the Dunn family first arrived, they used the back part of Ben Wetherill's original store building as living quarters. During the next few months they finished roofing and flooring the stone house begun by Ben, and they installed doors and windows in time for winter. A fireplace and kitchen stove provided heat. In the two-room store, which had come with only one counter scale and a platform scale, Ray, Jack, and Roy laid floors and constructed shelves and counters. In 1933 they built two small wooden cabins. Jack and Madelene stayed in one; the other was used for the occasional overnight guest.

Ray and his son-in-law Jack were partners in the store, which they called Navajo Mountain Trading Post. During these early years, however, visitors and others referred to it as Dunn's Trading Post. It was even labeled as such on the U.S. Geological Survey topographic map of the region.

One of the first customers to the trading post was known as Old Nasja, a Paiute who lived several miles to the east at the so-called Lower Crossing of Piute Canyon. His "government name" was Abner Owl; Nasja means owl in English. One source states that he was a member of the small band of Navajos and Paiutes led by Chief Hoskininni early in 1864. This band took refuge in the isolated Navajo Mountain area to escape the U.S. military campaign being waged in Chinle Valley and Canyon de Chelly. 12

According to one story, while Nasja and his son Nasja Begay were hunting for stray or wild horses in the canyons north and west of the mountain sometime prior to 1909, they came upon what would later be called Rainbow Natural Bridge. In the winter of 1908-1909, when Louisa Wetherill, wife of trader John Wetherill and mother of Ben Wetherill, was inquiring about a "stone rainbow" on the far side of Navajo Mountain, Nasja and his son were the only two who came forward.

The next summer, John Wetherill led a combined expedition, following instructions from Nasja for the first part of the journey around the north side of the mountain and guided by Nasja Begay for the last part to the west. On August 14, 1909, the expedition made the Anglo "discovery" of what turned out to be the largest natural bridge in the world. 13

In an interview done by the Kansas Wichita Eagle in 1934 while he was on a visit to his parents and grandparents, Ray described his trading post operation. He said that his customers were mainly Navajos and some Paiute Indians. "Everything we sell they buy and everything they sell we buy." The business was nearly all done by barter, using very little cash. Hides, pelts, lambs, wool, rugs, and saddle blankets were the principal barter used by the Indians, while the Dunns traded calico, sugar, tobacco, flour, and other staples. Some of the dry goods and hardware were obtained from the Babbitt Brothers Trading Company in Flagstaff, but the Dunns trucked in most of the supplies from the Charles Illfeld Gallup Mercantile Company in Gallup, New Mexico.

According to Ray, 90 percent of his business was on credit. He pointed out that "the credit risk of the Indian is much better than that of the white people. The Navajo Indian is the most industrious tribe and wholly self supporting. This is a very interesting race and those who are not educated or civilized are strictly honest. The Indian who has had contact with white people are [sic] not of such good character." 14

The main livelihood of the Navajos was derived from sheep and lambs. Ray would drive a herd of young sheep nearly 150 miles to Hibbard, a stop on the Santa Fe Railroad near Winslow, Arizona, each spring, selling them to feeders who took them to eastern Colorado and western Nebraska for fattening. A month's time was needed to get the herd to the railroad.

Very few of the local Indians spoke English at that time, but Jack Owen gradually picked up Navajo; and Madelene and Roy spoke the language fluently, having been raised among Navajo children since the ages of seven and five. Ethel could speak some Navajo, and Ray, of course, spoke the language from his years with the Indian Service and work at various trading posts in northern Arizona.

Writing in 1938 of a somewhat earlier trip, one visitor wrote the following, referring to Jack:

On one of these days some of us went round the side of the mountain to Dunn's trading post, which must be one of the remotest on the reservation. While we were in the store, looking at the bracelets left in pawn, a Navaho woman arrived with her herd and came in with a small sack of wool. It was queer to see how the trader, a pleasant young man with rimless spectacles, who looked as if he would be at home behind the prescription counter of a good drugstore, suddenly changed his easy hearty manner to suit the slow mysterious manner of the Indian woman."15

In 1963 the main room of the trading post had changed but little. It was rectangular, about thirty feet wide and twenty deep. At the back was a wooden counter about four feet in height that stretched around to include both side walls. The counters on each side had glass fronts; the one on the left contained leather goods and household articles of various kinds, while the one of the right displayed silver and turquoise jewelry. On the back counter sat the big, old-fashioned cash register. Shelves lined all three walls and were piled high with rolls of cloth, blankets, clothing (mostly shirts and jeans), and canned fruit, vegetables, and meats. One appliance present in 1963 that had certainly not been there in 1938 was a cooler/freezer full of soda pop and ice cream next to the front door. The room's only two windows flanked the door and had iron bars affixed on the outside. 16

The trading post was a social gathering place as well as a place to conduct business. Always the pace was slow and unhurried. It may have taken a good part of a morning or an afternoon for a local Indian to bring in an item—a rug or blanket or perhaps even a goatskin or sheep pelt—and then "trade out" its equivalent in some carefully chosen store items. This was especially true in the 1930s and '40s, though the process tended to speed up just a little with more cash transactions from the 1950s on.

However, travelers to Navajo Mountain were not frequent during the 1930s, and life at the trading post was often a lonely existence. The Dunns would lay in enough supplies by the first of December to last until spring. During the winter the family would be snowbound from the main roads, and their only contact with the outside world was by radio. They would sometimes have to wait two months before it was possible to go the sixtyfive miles to Tonalea for mail. During these slow times, Ray, Jack, and Roy would carry on quite a trapping enterprise, collecting coyote, bobcat, and occasional wolf pelts, while the women would read and play board games.

Every now and then something out of the ordinary would happen to break the routine. Each summer from 1933 until 1938, members of the Rainbow Bridge—Monument Valley Expedition from the University of California at Berkeley would pass by the post. In 1933 the group spent two weeks in reconnaissance of the nearby Rainbow Bridge and Forbidding Canyon drainages. That summer was especially memorable because the expedition spent the Fourth of July—complete with an Independence Day celebration—at the trading post. A member of that year's expedition, Torrey Lyons, wrote in his diary:

Mon. July 3 It was 12 miles to Dunn's Place, a little trading post at the foot of Navajo Mountain. The engineers and the geologists were here already and tonight a bunch of fellows from the east arrived In fact, everyone is supposed to be here for the 4th tomorrow, about 60. There are a lot of Indians here, and we sang for a while and now the Indians are singing.

Tue. July 4 This morning the expedition fellows had wrestling matches, an air mattress blowing contest, and a dressing contest inside the sleeping bags. The Indians looked on and seemed to get quite a kick out of it. This afternoon up on the hill the Indians had horse races, mule races, a chicken pull, foot races, a tug of war between the Indians and the whites (the Indians won), and a whiskering contest for the expedition guys It rained this evening, and we had fire works. I just saw a camera flare over where the dance is to be so I guess it must have started " 17

The summer of 1934 saw a noteworthy visitor, though the visit seemed unremarkable at the time. On June 29 young Everett Ruess, a painter, poet, and traveler from California, wrote in a letter from War God Spring on Navajo Mountain:

The post where I last got my supplies is a costly place to trade. The owner has to haul his stuff 350 miles by truck, over the worst of roads. In this remote place he never sees a tourist, and seldom a dime crosses his counter in a year. All his business is trade, in wool, sheepskins, and blankets. Gallup, New Mexico, is the nearest place he can dispose of them. He has been offered 17 cents a pound for the wool which costs him 20 if he will haul it to New Mexico.18

That this referred to Navajo Mountain MadelenG) Jack> andMadelene> Trading Post is evidenced by a letter he younger sister, Harriett. wrote the following day, in which he stated, "I left the World Digests with Trader Dunn at TeeceYaToh (Water under the Cottonwoods)." 19

Later that fall, in November, Ruess disappeared while traveling south from the little town of Escalante in southern Utah. He was, seemingly, never heard from or of again. Several unsuccessful searches were made, including a final one in the late summer of 1935 by reporter John U. Terrell of the Salt Lake Tribune. Part of this search included the Navajo reservation, where Ruess had spent much time, and Terrell's party outfitted at "Dunn's Navajo mountain trading post."

In an article appearing in an August issue of the newspaper, Terrell stated that "Mr. Ray Dunn, the trader at Navajo mountain...stood firmly behind the assertation [sic] that had Ruess come into the Navajo country it would have been known at once. "The following day, Terrell quoted Ray as saying, "You may go through it [the Navajo Reservation] without seeing an Indian, but don't ever think the Indians won't see you. It would be impossible to ride through that country and not be seen." 20

In 1935 there was another new arrival to the Dunn—Owen family with the birth of Jack and Madelene's daughter, Arlene, in March. In 1936 the "community" expanded with the opening of the U.S. Indian Service day school a short distance down Cottonwood Wash, east of the trading post. In 1946 this school was enlarged into a boarding school.

In 1937 Ray, Ethel, Roy, and daughter Harriett left Navajo Mountain and moved to Fort Defiance, Arizona. As a concession from the federal government, Harriett had been allowed to attend the Indian school at Navajo Mountain, but at that time it only went up through the second grade. Therefore, the Dunns felt that a move was necessary to get her into a regular school. At Fort Defiance, the family bought and operated Dunn Mercantile, which included a store, cafe, warehouse, and living quarters all under one roof. Jack, Madelene, and Arlene stayed on at Navajo Mountain and continued to run the trading post.

In the spring of 1940 tragedy struck when twenty-four-year-old Roy died of cancer at the U.S. government hospital in Fort Defiance. He, perhaps more than any other member of the family, had traveled and explored throughout the Navajo Mountain area. It seems that he rarely went anywhere without his camera, as at least five albums of black-and-white photographs attest. In several places he left his name and the date carved in the rock. Roy liked the Indians, and since he spoke fluent Navajo, he was accepted by them and shared many experiences with them. 21

In 1942 Ray, Ethel, and Harriett made a momentous move. For the first time in more than twenty years they left the Navajo Reservation region and headed back east, not just to Colorado but to the far northeastern corner of Oklahoma. In Ottawa County, almost to the Missouri state line, they settled on a farm of clear streams, rolling hills, and abundant trees.

They had several reasons for making so drastic a move. Even after two years, Ray especially was still feeling the effects of his son's untimely death. The store at Fort Defiance had been a large operation, meaning constant work and long hours, and the family had little time off and few "free" days. According to his daughter Harriett, all of this caused Ray what today we would call burnout. Northeastern Oklahoma provided a complete contrast to the northern Arizona and Navajo Mountain region, and Ethel's brother and sister-in-law also lived nearby.

Another upheaval in the lives of the extended Dunn—Owen family was a move by Jack, Madelene, and Arlene to Fort Defiance in 1944. Once again, the relocation provided an opportunity for a child—nine-year-old Arlene—to attend public school. Jack and Madelene ran the Fort Defiance Trading Post, which was, coincidentally, almost directly across the road from the old Dunn Mercantile store. The family sold the Navajo Mountain Trading Post to Elvin Kerley, a trader from Tuba City, Arizona. For the next eight years, someone other than a member of the Dunn family was at Navajo Mountain. During most of that time the post was managed by Lloyd Bolles.

In 1945 Jack, Madelene, and Arlene followed Madelene's parents to Oklahoma. For about six months they lived just a few miles from the farm, in the small town of Wyandotte, while they assisted with the buying of registered sheep and dairy cattle for the farm. But the move was only temporary. By the fall, Madelene and Jack had returned to the Navajo Reservation. They purchased The Gap Trading Post on Highway 89 in northern Arizona, some sixty-five miles southwest of Navajo Mountain across the Kaibito Plateau. Arlene remained in Oklahoma to attend school, but she spent her summers in Arizona.

During the next few years, two losses came to Madelene. In October 1948 Jack died as a result of a severe case of pneumonia, and on March 1, 1951, her father, Ray, passed away from a heart attack. After her grandfather's death Arlene returned to Arizona to finish high school in Flagstaff.

Madelene stayed on at The Gap, little realizing that Navajo Mountain would soon be beckoning once again. In June 1952 she married Ralph Cameron, a trucker who frequented The Gap. During this time, Elvin Kerley contacted the couple and offered to sell Navajo Mountain Trading Post back to them. Madelene and Ralph wanted the more traditional setting of bartering mainly with Navajos instead of dealing with the highway tourists and truckers who came to The Gap, so they decided to make the move—one that would last Madelene for the next twenty-eight years.

Another factor in the decision was the opportunity to take tourists by horseback to Rainbow Bridge, which lay nestled deep down in the maze of canyons on the northwest side of Navajo Mountain. The area had been a national monument since 1909, but a visit to the bridge required either a river trip down the Colorado River and a six-mile walk up Aztec Creek and Bridge Canyon or a grueling hike around Navajo Mountain. Actually, the Camerons were not the first to take paying "dudes" on horseback to Rainbow Bridge. As far back as 1924, four years before Ben Wetherill's time, the Richardson family of Winslow, Arizona, had had the same idea. In April of that year, on the southern, Arizona, slope of Navajo Mountain, S. I. Richardson began building Rainbow Lodge. Though it had a store that catered to the local Indian trade, it was not a true trading post like the Dunns' establishment. Indeed, the Richardsons' original permit granted them permission "to establish Rainbow Lodge at Navajo Mountain." 22

According to Madelene and Harriett, soon after their father obtained the trading post from Ben Wetherill in 1932 there was an unwritten "gentleman's agreement" made between the Richardsons and Ray Dunn that if Rainbow Lodge stayed out of the trading business Ray would stay out of the tourist business. But by 1952 circumstances had changed. The Richardsons had sold Rainbow Lodge in 1938, and in August 1951 it had burned to the ground.

To accommodate tourists, Madelene and Ralph used the two small wooden cabins built in 1933. Later, a stone washhouse, complete with showers, was constructed. Ralph would often lead the pack trips himself, though other wranglers, notably Tom Daly and, later, Joe Folgheraiter, worked for the Camerons seasonally and would occasionally guide trips. Almost all of the trips were to Rainbow Bridge, although the couple also advertised excursions to the top of Navajo Mountain. As of 1962, however, it was stated that "he [Ralph Cameron] reports that he has had only four takers" for the summit trip! 23

In April 1957 Madelene and Ralph's trading post and pack trips received some worldwide mention in a National Geographic article, "Three Roads to Rainbow," by Ralph Gray. One of the three "roads" was by horseback from Navajo Mountain Trading Post. Less publicity, but more appreciation, came between 1959 and 1962, when archaeological investigations were conducted at various prehistoric sites near Navajo Mountain through the Glen Canyon Project of the Museum of Northern Arizona. Navajo Mountain Trading Post served the needs of the personnel with various services and supplies, and it provided the group's water source.

The final published report of the museum's work was in part dedicated to "Madelene Dunn Cameron." Also, in the "Credits and Acknowledgements" section of the report, the joint authors stated:

Mrs. Madelene Cameron, Navajo Mountain Trading Post, has since the Project's inception contributed directly and indirectly to the success of each field operation. Mrs. Cameron assisted in the recruiting of workmen from the Navajo Mountain Chapter for our field crews, offered the hospitality of her home and the facilities of the trading post to our field staff, and on innumerable occasions undertook to answer and solve our questions concerning geography, history, and local inhabitants of the Navajo Mountain region. Often these bits of information provided new insight and approaches to our work as well as data not readily obtainable without intensive field work with local informants. Further, it should be noted that Mrs. Cameron has on numerous occasions served the anthropologist by assisting each field worker to establish himself in the area. The interest and cooperation of Mrs. Cameron... [are] sincerely appreciated."24

Slowly, "civilization" came to Navajo Mountain. In 1959, about a quarter mile east of the trading post, the Navajo Tribal Council built a chapter house for the use of the local political arm of the tribal government. The road from the south was graded and "improved," but still it was a rough, two-hour-plus drive to the highway between Kayenta and Tuba City. The Camerons still trucked in their own supplies, though they had switched their supply point from Gallup to Flagstaff. As late as the mid-1960s most of the native residents of the Navajo Mountain area were still "traditionalists." A number still spoke no English, but they turned their battery-powered radios to the daily Navajo language program from Flagstaff and the weekly Navajo news roundup from Gallup.

In 1972 Madelene endured another loss when Ralph suffered a severe heart attack and died in an airplane en route to the hospital in Flagstaff. She continued on with the trading post for seven more years before finally "retiring" and selling out to Dick Johnson of Kanab, Utah, in 1979. Just as her parents had done thirty-four years earlier, she moved east, to the town of Miami in northeastern Oklahoma. There Madelene helped care for her mother, who lived in Miami just a few miles from the old farm. Ethel passed away on June 17, 1983.

At the present time, Madelene still resides in Miami, now living with her own daughter, Arlene Owen Pendley Her sister, Harriett Dunn Tolliver, lives just a few hours away in Hutchinson, Kansas. Madelene still gets back to Navajo Mountain on occasion, usually for the annual Pioneer Days celebration sponsored by the local tribal chapter. Madelene Dunn Cameron certainly qualifies as a pioneer of the area.

The Navajo Mountain community today remains one of the smallest and most isolated communities on the reservation. A telephone is still hard to come by, and mail is delivered only three days a week. A doctor comes up once a week for an open clinic. A twenty-mile graded washboard road provides access to the nearest pavement south, near Inscription House Trading Post, though the pavement is slowly creeping northward. The Dunns' trading post, once the center of the community, is now closed. "Too hard to get gasoline trucks in on the road," said the last owner, Dick Johnson, "and too many regulations to meet." 25

The trading post closed in 1990. A few miles north, a new school and a fifteen-unit housing complex comprise what is called Rainbow City. The old Navajo Mountain Trading Post now sits lonely and abandoned by the water and cottonwoods of Teas-ya-toh and beneath the blue-black bulk of Naat'sis'aan.

NOTES

James Knipmeyer is an avocational historian living in Lee's Summit, Missouri Unless otherwise noted, all photos are courtesy of Madelene Dunn Cameron

1 Herbert E Gregory, Geology of Navajo Country, United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 93 (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1917), 128 A laccolith is a lenticular-shaped intrusion of igneous

2 Herbert E Gregory, The Navajo Country: A Geographic and Hydrologic Reconnaissance of Parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, United States Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 380 (Washington, D.C : Government Printing Office, 1916), 44 Donald L Baars, Navajo Country: A Geology and Natural History of the Four Corners Region (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 61.

3 Herbert E Bolton, ed., Pageant in the Wilderness (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1950), 119. Jose Manuel Espinoza, "The Legend of Sierra Azul," New Mexico Historical Review, April 1934, 152. L. R. Bailey, ed., The Navajo Reconnaissance (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1964), 83

4 Pearson H Coibett,Jacob Hamblin, the Peacemaker (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1952), 191-92

5 Frederick S Dellenbaugh, A Canyon Voyage (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1962), 141

6 Neil M Judd, Men Met Along the Trail University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 43 Baars, Navajo Country, 61.

7 "Teas-ya-toh" is a phonetic spelling used in the 1920-30s, as was the spelling "Teece-Ya-Toh."

8 Clyde Kluckhohn, Beyond the Rainbow (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1933), 167-68. Benjamin Wade Wetherill was the only son of John and Louisa Wetherill, well-known traders at Oljato, Utah, and Kayenta, Arizona

9 Unless otherwise noted, all information concerning the Dunn family and their connection with Navajo Mountain Trading Post was obtained from the author's interviews and correspondence with Madelene Dunn Cameron, Arlene Owen Pendley, and Harriett Dunn Tolliver. Letters and notes are in possession of the author.

10 Bureau of Indian Affairs The title "U.S Indian Service" was often used unofficially during the first half of the 1900s

11 Ray and Ethel sometimes taught the children themselves; occasionally they hired someone to live with them and tutor the children

12 Harold Drake, interview by Stephen C Jett, August 21, 1985; transcript in possession of Dr Jett, University of California-Davis

13 Stephen C. Jett, "The Great 'Race' to 'Discover' Rainbow Natural Bridge in 1909," Kiva 58 (1992): 10, 19-20,22

14 Wichita Eagle, July 27, 1934.

15 J B Priestly, "Rainbow in the Desert," Saturday Evening Posrjune 18, 1938, 29

16 Author's first trip to Navajo Mountain Trading Post in June 1963.

17 Torrey Lyons, Diary of Rainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition, 1933 (Typescript copy, Navajo National Monument, Arizona), 8

18 W L Rusho, Everett Ruess:A Vagabondfor Beauty (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1983), 160

19 Randall Henderson, On Desert Trails with Everett Ruess (Palm Desert, Calif.: Desert Magazine Press, 1950), 55

20 Salt Lake Tribune, August 25 and 26, 1935.

21 The photo albums are presendy in the possession of Madelene Cameron.

22 Folder on Rainbow Lodge, unpublished material, no date, in possession of Stan Jones, Page, Arizona; copy in author's possession.

23 Stephen C Jett, Tourism in Navajo Country: Resources and Planning (Window Rock, Arizona: Navajo Tribe, 1966), 103

24 Alexander J Lindsay, Jr., et al., Survey and Excavations North and East cf Navajo Mountain, Utah, 1959-1962, Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin No. 45 (Flagstaff, Arizona, 1968), vi.

25 Rose Houk, "Pioneer Days at Navajo Mountain," Arizona Highways, August 1994,15