Forgotten but not gone: Abandoned buildings on Highway 89 haunt a way of life

The gradual decline of the motel was noticeable each time we passed. The sparse number of cars in the parking lot began to be replaced with grass that grew from the cracks in the pavement. Then, one day, the windows were boarded up, and all signs of habitation were gone. While I was witness to the final days of the motel, I was also aware of the other buildings in the area that had also closed down.

Wauneta Trading Post is probably the most well known due to the interests of urban explorers. The trading post is mentioned in several online forums, and it has also been visited by a few YouTubers in the past. Wauneta is easily recognizable from the road side with its drooping roof and the billboard sign that has since been tagged by an artist to read “Radioactive pollution kills, it's time to clean up the mines.”

Despite the state of disrepair, the structure seems sound – though I would strongly advise against crawling through the broken windows to have a look inside. The interior is littered with various debris from broken furniture and shelves that have collapsed either due to time or intruders.

Information about the trading post is scarce. What little I could find through people local to the area and in public records could tell me little more than who the land was deeded to at the time of its operation. However the YouTube channel Jessie’s Drone Adventures did yield some of the building's history.

While the Youtuber was exploring the derelict shack that was, he happened to cross paths with a former employee that was passing through. The former employee, Bill Wilson, worked at Wauneta during the 1970s.

“[It was a] true trading post at that time, [it wasn’t a] tourist trap. We dealt with local people, buying and selling with them,” Wilson says in the video. “It was rare to have a tourist drop in.”

Wilson revealed that Wauneta was once a subsidiary in a chain of trading posts in the southwest. Wauneta bought and sold a variety of goods ranging from pottery and rugs to meat and cattle. It was a marketplace for local people according to Wilson, but after years of operation, the couple that owned the trading post, Floyd and Rossie (no last names mentioned), tragically, passed away – Rossie during surgery and Floyd two years later in a car accident not far from Wauneta. The trading post has been abandoned ever since.

This story is common among the abandoned haunts scattered along this dusty highway, but like Wauneta, there is a dilapidated, Whiting Brothers motel in Gray Mountain that is being reclaimed by local artists as part of a beautification movement known as the Painted Desert Project.

The Painted Desert Project was originally started by Chip Thomas in 2009 when he painted some pictures on abandoned structures in the area, but it soon grew into a large-form public art gallery patched together in the open space by local and visiting Indigenous artists.

In 2020, the artists collaborated on painting several murals on the Whiting Brothers motel, adjacent buildings and the water tanks in the area. The stunning artworks have attracted the attention of tourists passing through the area and are quite popular on the internet. The vibrant color makes the structures pop against the desert background, and messages like “you are enough” and “American rent is due” make the once bland motel a topic of conversation and interest.

There are also several dedications from the artists to their loved ones. Jerrel Singer, a local to Cameron, dedicated a painting to his aunt, Geri Singer and to the Navajo Nation. The southern pillar of the motel has the collective names of all the artists that participated in the creation of the murals. Paintings from the Painted Desert Project can be found all across Highway 89 on various structures.

Across from the motel is another deteriorating trading post, but unlike Wauneta, there doesn't seem to be a name attached to it.

Agnes Klade, a close friend, had a grandmother who was a weaver that dealt with the Gray Mountain trading post, but she has very little recollection of the establishment. All she could recall was that her grandmother used to sell the sash belts, blankets and rugs she wove to the trading posts in Cameron, Gray Mountain and Wauneta.

Donna “Danimal” Tohonnie, another close friend, also had family members that either worked at the trading post or sold their products to them. Tohonnie has few memories of the place and family members that we reached out to also couldn’t remember who they dealt with at the shops as they often sold their products by commission and didn’t have a regular representative at the trading posts. .

This seemed to be a common issue I came across while interviewing locals. Families like the Manns, the Knights and the Means all had dealings with the trading posts but couldn’t offer much more insight about the owners, managers or their daily operations. A former employee who now works at the Cameron Trading Post said that many of the old managers had moved out of the region or have since passed away. The Gray Mountain trading post’s past is shrouded in mystery, and as time has told, it will remain that way.

The culprit behind each of these closures seems to be the economic decay that the nation experienced in the 1970s and the 1990s. These now forsaken properties stand as a stark reminder of a way of life that vanishes day by day. For better or worse, trading posts have intricate ties with Navajo communities. They have served as a place of employment in an economic desert and as a venue for local artists to sell their wares. While the last closure happened nearly two decades ago, the after effects can still be felt by the people in the community today. Most artisans in the area have been very entrepreneurial, establishing their own vendor stalls or creating their art based on commissions. However, with new closures on the horizon due to the safety concerns of these roadside locations, it makes me wonder if new ghosts will come to haunt this arid stretch of Highway 89.