Editor s note: This article is a part of a series reviewing Utah and U.S. history for KSL.com s Historic section.
BLANDING, San Juan County A significant Navajo Nation trading post at the heart of Monument Valley in southeast Utah received major recognition Thursday as efforts begin to save it before it s possibly lost forever.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Oljato Trading Post one of its 11 most endangered historic sites in the United States this year, which highlights it as one of the more important historic sites in desperate need of rehabilitation to preserve it.
The listing comes as members of the Navajo Nation and also historians have started to look into ways to rehabilitate the structures tied to the trading post and turn them into a new community center and tourism destination at the center of growing popular outdoors spots like Monument Valley and Bears Ears National Monument.
Utah State Historical Society
Originally published on June 3, 2021 11:38 am
An unassuming roadside motel that s a spiritual home to the blues. A crumbling Navajo trading post standing right by Monument Valley, and an old filling station that offered refuge to Black travelers during Jim Crow. Campsites for crusading civil rights demonstrators in the 1960s and ones that housed Chinese railway workers a century before.
These are among the most endangered historic sites in the U.S. right now, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Every year, the organization issues a list of buildings and other places threatened by development, climate change or neglect.
(This is a story of) Americans wanting to have an impact and do something at great peril to themselves and their family, Howard said. It’s a story of people who loved America when America didn’t necessarily love them, but they wanted (more rights) for their children.
Howard is in the process of looking for funding to preserve the homes. Their inclusion in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list could be a gamechanger for their efforts; Malone-France said since the nonprofit’s first list came out more than 30 years ago, they have lost less than 5 percent of the more than 300 endangered places named since.
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