Navajo Rug Collector? Visit Hubbel Trading Post

The Hubbel Trading Post in Northern Arizona was built by John Lorenzo Hubbel in 1878. The trading post was operated by the family until 1965, when it was sold to the National Park Service. Run by the Western National Parks Association, the trading post is both a museum, and a going concern (though non-profit). Offering up a structure made of rock with over a hundred years of history, and a viable trading post selling untold numbers of handcrafted Navajo rugs, as well as a smattering of Pueblo goods from nearby Zuni and the Hopi Mesas, the trading post has something for everyone.

The Western National Park Service offers daily tours of the Hubbel house. The house, filled to the brim with priceless antique Native American artifacts, is well worth the time it takes to tour. Be careful though, as the Navajo Reservation stays on Mountain time in the Summer, while Arizona, which has no daylight savings time switch, is Pacific time. This can cause you to be an hour later than expected if you are driving from an Arizona locale.

The house tour is very nice, but for rug buyers, the trading post itself is the holy grail. The rug room features hundreds of rugs from every corner of the Navajo Reservation. They carry mostly newer rugs, but often have a terrific selection of antiques as well. The rugs are stacked on the floor and hang from the walls.

For people starting a rug collection, the trading post employees know their stuff, and as the rugs were bought directly from the artists, and the post is now non profit, you know for a fact that the rug you are buying is both genuine and fairly priced.

For those who have collections, but have never seen the livestock from which they come, the nearby fields have the Churro sheep that produce the wool that your collection comes from.

The Hubbel Trading Post does not sell on line, the only source for these rugs is the long drive across the starkly beautiful northern Arizona desert. For a collector, what better trip than to the heart of the land that produces these lovely rugs?