More Information
Riders
to
the
Rainbow
by
Winona
Johnson
Holloway
Stories
about
family-operated
Rainbow
Lodge
and
Trading
Post
remotely
located
on
the
Navajo
reservation.
About the author
Winona Johnson Holloway is the author of two other books, Moving Up and Moving Out.
Comments by the publisher
This is a story of the 1952 season when the author and her family operated the now vanished Rainbow Lodge and Trading Post in the far northern part of the Navajo reservation, an area now easily accessible by boat on Lake Powell. It is a first-hand account of dealing with the tourist trade and running the last regular mule trips to Rainbow Bridge as well as "trading by ear" with the Navajos in what was then the most isolated part of Arizona.
At the time of this story few adults native to the Navajo Mountain area spoke English, and most transportation was by mule-drawn wagon, horseback, or on foot. Tourists who took the mule trip on the 14-mile trail to the Bridge had already braved a rudimentary road over sand and slickrock to reach the lodge, and were the self-selected few who sought such adventure in the era before sport utility vehicles and power boats opened the region to many.
This book tells how the Holloway family coped with the isolation, interacting with a culture new to them, and catering to "dudes" in a unique and distant place, in a time now gone.
