Fred Harvey's hotel in Gallup, named El Navajo, opened in 1923. In 1929 it served as a base for Indian Detours from Gallup. The hotel was in the right side of the building and the AT&SF train station was on the left. The station still stands today, but the hotel section was demolished.
Zuni Pueblo, thirty miles south of Gallup, NM today, consisted of six villages made of stone houses when Spanish explorer Coronado visited in 1540, not the seven cities of gold that he was expecting in Cibola. Zuni natives sold fine hand-crafted jewelry and fetishes when the Detourists arrived in 1929, and they still do today.
Heading east from Zuni, the next stop for the Detourists was El Morro National Monument with its famous Inscription Rock, where travelers inscribed their names on the rock face. Many names can still be read today.
Motoring on east on the Indian Detours for fourteen miles from El Morro, the Detourists came to Bandera Volcano Ice Cave. This cave is a lava tube containing permanent ice in its year-round temperature of 31 degrees Fahrenheit.
Just east of the Ice Cave, the Detourists saw these hardened lava flows in what is today El Malpais National Monument (click on the photo for more information). "El Malpais" is Spanish for "the badlands," which were impossible to cross and had to be skirted around, just as the highways do today. The Detour followed the highway north to Grants, and then west back to Gallup, NM.
John Lorenzo Hubbell at his trading post in Ganado, Arizona purchasing Navajo rugs and blankets in the late 1800s.
Hubbell Trading Post today is a National Historic Site established on August 28, 1965, and administered by the National Park Service. The building looks the same as in the 1800s, as seen in the rock walls of the building in both photos.
In this photograph of Canyon de Chelly by Ansel Adams, the broad sweep of dry watercourses is shown with the resulting erosion of the sandstone rock cliffs by the water over thousands of years. For more information about Canyon de Chelly National Monument, click the photo.
Spider Rock is one of the fantastic formations seen by the Detourists on their trip to Canyon de Chelly. Indian Detours founder Hunter Clarkson played a major role in promoting Canyon de Chelly as a National Monument in the 1920s. Click on the photo to find out more about Clarkson.