John Lorenzo Hubbell was born Nov. 27, 1853, at a homestead in the South Valley to Juliana Gutiérrez and James Lawrence Santiago Hubbell. He was their second son and third of 12 children.
Bernalillo County purchased his family home, the Gutiérrez-Hubbell House, and surrounding property in 2000 and designated it an open space. The well-used property has a working farm, walking trail, meeting spaces and a museum.
The younger Hubbell eventually left his family home, heading to Utah and eventually settling down in Arizona, where he would establish a conglomerate of trading posts, serve as sheriff and start a family. Hubbell died just a week before his 77th birthday on Nov. 20, 1930, in Ganado. He is buried on the property he nurtured and turned into a fixture in the world of Indian craftsmanship.
The trading post, which was opened in 1878, exposed the greater population to Native American artistry and to this day carries on the traditions set by Hubbell.
The trading post and its surrounding 160-acre site sits within the Navajo Nation, 53 miles northwest of Gallup and 156 miles east of Flagstaff, Ariz., and is now part of the National Park Service. It’s about a three-hour drive from Albuquerque in good weather.
Hubbell’s daughter-in-law Dorothy Hubbell sold the property to the federal government in 1967 in an effort to keep the property and its contents intact by turning it into a historical site.