NAU Cline Library(PH.658.89) John Walker's Old Leupp Trading Post of 1910.

The two-story Old Leupp Trading Post. Courtesy of Leupp Chapter House.

Mr. John Walker earned a degree in advanced course of study from the Hampton Institute in Virginia. Hampton Institute was a school established for Black students in the 1800's. In the 1870's, after the Navajos returned from Fort Sumner, Navajo students were taken from their families and sent to Hampton to be "civilized" into the mainstream society through assimilation and acculturation. Mr. Walker eventually returned to Navajo land to become a trader at Tolchaco around 1906. In 1910, Mr. Walker established the Leupp Trading Post in Old Leupp when the BIA began building its agency there. By 1912, Mr Walker sold the post to pursue employment with the federal government as a clerk. Sadly in 1925, he died of tuberculosis.

When Stanton and Ida Mae Borum became owners of the Old Leupp Store in 1929, they made additions. Thus, a two-story trading post was erected. During the Japanese internment in 1943 during World War II, local Navajo eyewitnesses reported that the trader loaded his truck with goods to take into the penal colony to sell to the inmates. Navajo eyewitnesses say the trader's name was someone with the last name of McGee.