Over the Great Navajo Trail

Over the Great Navajo Trail
by Carl Eickemeyer
Adopted for Conservation by
Madeline A. Copp and Ronald S. Brashear
on June 25, 2019
Over the Great Navajo Trail cover

Over the great Navajo Trail

By Carl Eickemeyer. New York: [Press of J.J. Little & Co.], 1900.

Carl Eickemeyer had a great fondness for travel, photography, and the Navajo people of New Mexico and Arizona. One of the earliest travel books on the American Southwest, Over the Great Navajo Trail is a novel account of the author’s 165-mile overland trek into Navajoland in northeastern Arizona with his wife Lillian, and Navajo guide and interpreter Sam Reader. The trio set out from Santa Fe in summer 1896 by horse and wagon on a camping and sightseeing journey over rugged topographies and landscapes, isolated villages and trading posts, and finally deep into Navajo country. His admirable observations of Navajo family life are insightful and unbiased, a rare perspective of that time. Anyone familiar with New Mexico and Arizona terrain will recognize sites and places in his geographic descriptions and appreciate the now-historic photographs. Raised in Yonkers, Carl was a mechanical engineer and inventor, and authored several books related to his beloved Southwest.

Condition and Treatment: 

This volume has an early 20th century publisher's binding with a decoratively stamped front cover and spine. The covers are detaching at the gutters due to the adhesive failure. Conservators will remove the textblock from the case and clean and re-line the spine with airplane linen. The textblock will then be re-cased in the original cover.

Discover more about this book in our Catalog.

Adoption Type: Preserve for the Future

Location: 
Vine Deloria, Jr. Library, National Museum of the American Indian