Teec Trailer And The Water Tank

1966: After writing and posting this I found a postcard written by my mom, Peggy Scates, to her mother, Lucille Wyrick on May 9, 1966. Here’s what she says: “… everything is happening at once. We are not moving to Crownpoint [between Coyote Canyon and Borrego Pass]. The Red Mesa area has opened very rapidly, so we’ll have to live somewhere in-between . Maybe Teec Nos Pos. We are going to be (for sure) where the kids are on a bus route. The people at Red Mesa have already voted and given us 5 acres. We are having regular services now at Borrego Pass & Coyote Canyon. …. Love, Peg.”

It was time to move our family onto the Navajo Reservation, which meant that the trailer house which Mom & Dad (Peggy & David Scates) had purchased was to be moved 45 miles from Cortez, CO to Teec Nos Pos, AZ. (pronounced teese naus paus) ) This was a first stop while Dad was to build a home for us at Red Mesa, another 17 miles down the road. Teec means tree in Navajo and Teec Nos Pos means something like a grove of trees.

Between Cortez and Teec Nos Pos lies The Four Corners where the states of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona come together in one spot. As a young girl when we visited The Four Corners it was much like this postcard photo with rocks on the ground to show the state lines.

Electricity was available so Dad got us hooked up. That wasn’t a problem. But there weren’t any water lines. We had received permission to set the trailer near a creek that ran behind and below the trailer, and there were some nice cottonwood trees growing there.

Dad bought a 500 gallon water tank and set up some kind of pump in the creek and pumped water to the tank. I remember specifically that he researched and determined that the 500 gallon tank needed one cup of bleach to purify the water. So that’s what we had for water. I guess there was some sort of screen to keep the debris at bay – I mean from what I remember the water was clean and just fine. But I was a bit sorry the one day I looked through the small opening on top down into the water and could see some lively “creatures” swimming around in the tank.

When people would come to visit, sometimes they got sick and my parents determined that the water might have been the cause.

Our trailer house was approximately 1,000 sq ft with our family of 6 and the first year included two boys, Douglas Benally and his cousin Herman. These boys were from Coyote Canyon, NM which was about 100 miles south and a bit east of Teec Nos Pos. Douglas was in the second grade and Herman in the 6th grade. Being the only girl in the group I had my own room which was the size of a twin bed and about 2 feet wide space along the bed. The 5 boys slept in a room with the same amount of floor space but it had a double bed and then another double bed above in a sort of loft.

Douglas was a day student at the Teec Nos Pos Boarding School. Herman, Dan, Ersky and I rode the school bus for 30 miles to go to school in Shiprock NM.

Our family lived here at Teec Nos Pos for 2 years from 1966-1968.

Our family at Red Mesa in 1966:
David, Dan, Douglas, Herman (behind Dan), Lynn, Ersky, Peggy and Kelly
A better photo of Herman and silly photo of Douglas. Both boys a joy to have in our home. Douglas was especially fun and and one of our favorite quotes from him was “What’s so laughy?” – which was his question when we were all laughing at something and he didn’t quite get the joke.

3 thoughts on “Teec Trailer And The Water Tank”

    1. Sarah, Yes, the bus stop was only about 1/2 mile from our trailer house. We met the bus as it came down the hill from the Teec Nos Pos, AZ, Boarding School to enter the highway. The bus was loaded with Jr. & Sr. high students. The Boarding School was only up to 6th grade if I remember right). It was 30 miles to the Shiprock, NM, public schools but took about an hour because we had several stops along the way to pick up students.

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